Safe
by Javanyet
Summary: A notquitemortal newcomer enters the Toronto Community, and Nick's life, with unexpected consequences for both.
1. Chapter 1

Maura was on her way to the side entrance that Saturday night to collect cover when Janette caught her in passing. She'd only been on the job for a week but already she sensed her new boss had taken a personal interest. Given the details of their respective lives, it wasn't a surprise.

"Maura, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. He comes by the club frequently, and should never be questioned or charged for anything." She indicated the good looking man to her right, medium-tall, dressed in black jeans, white buttoned-up shirt, and black leather jacket. His hair was strawberry blonde, she'd never seen many guys with that color. His eyes were a deep blue-grey, a much darker version of Janette's, and old in contrast to the boyish face that sported a stylish scruff of beard. Though there was no physical resemblance, she wondered if he and Janette were related, and how. She already knew the answer, and she knew what he was even before that.

"Hi, I'm Maura Logue," she said with a smile as she extended her hand. "Janette hired me to manage security but I'm still learning the operation."

"Maura has had extensive club experience in Boston and Vancouver," Janette explained, never taking her eyes off Nick, gauging his reaction, "only a fool would have turned her away. Maura, this is Nicholas Knight, he's a police detective. We go... far back."

He smiled and took her hand, "Call me Nick. I'm glad to meet someone Janette trusts so completely with Raven, there aren't many who can say that."

She held his eyes as their hands joined. His grip was normal male strong/gentle, but his skin was cool. Not what you'd expect during the warmer-than-usual May Toronto was enjoying. Cool as in body-cool. There was something else. A visual "click" in his eyes, one Maura could feel as well as see, a shock of recognition he was very good at disguising. But not entirely. In that one second, each knew who the other was. And Janette knew it would happen. After the merest second of blank cognition, Nick's smile returned as he released Maura's hand. Only they noticed the heartbeat's hesitation.

"Well. I'm sure we'll see more of each other. As Janette said, I pass through frequently."

"Well, a police detective might be a handy ally in my business," Maura acknowledged.

Nick raised an amused eyebrow as Janette commented, "I rather hope not, cherie."

"Homicide," Nick explained, and Maura shrugged.

"Whatever it takes. It was very nice meeting you, Detective Knight," at which point he corrected, "Nick. Just Nick." Maura laughed, and Nick could fairly taste the richness behind it. "Well then, Just Nick, I hope to see you again, but _not_ professionally." With a nod to Janette, she was gone about her business.

Immediately Nick turned to Janette and demanded, "Where did you _find_ her?"

A shrug. "She found me, Nicolas. That is the truth. She came in the door on Monday night looking for a job, and the staff nearly fainted as one."

Nick responded drily, "I can imagine. Does she know what she is?"

"I daresay if she didn't, she would not have lived this long. She knows too well. She knew what I am, what we all are, she had heard the rumors and came here of her own accord. Safety in numbers, perhaps."

"Like a virgin in a men's prison? I doubt that very much." He was watching Maura as she chatted with the Vargo the bouncer, then handed off her take to the Vachon at the bar for safekeeping. She knew all of them were vampires, whatever made her think she could work here safely?

"Are you watching out for her, is that it? Is she one of yours?" The last word held an unmistakable weight.

Janette gave an incredulous laugh. "No, she is not 'one of mine'. I can't afford to be so clouded by desire. She is nobody's, not now. But she has told me… things, about other places and others like us. Not pretty, to be sure. So I let her stay in the office for now. It's safer than anywhere else, since you know she can't disguise herself as we do. Mortals are easy to fool, but she is unmistakable to us. And even immortals would like to keep their jobs, so she is left unmolested. Besides, she fits in rather well."

"Why Janette, have you become a humanitarian?" Nick asked in undisguised amusement.

"Who knows better than we do what it means to be hunted?" she reminded him sharply. "And besides, I needed a security manager, Nicolas. Who better than one who knows us but is no threat? And no competition," she mused, eyes following a young mortal who trailed by, drink in hand. "Excuse me," she followed after him.

Nick shook his head slowly. In 800 years, he had heard about mortals referred to as "prized", but had never met one, had almost come to take them as mere legend. Mortals whose blood was rich beyond imagining, ambrosia, searing the senses with euphoric delights that defied description. A human drug. Nobody knew the why or how, but to find one was to find paradise, brief respites from the hell on earth the immortal existence too often became. Any vampire, it was said, could detect any prized mortal in a crowd of a thousand mortals. Their scent, it was said, was like honeysuckle mixed with amber, and Nick realized that he'd been struck by that when Maura had come within six feet of him and Janette. And during the new moon the power of their blood increased tenfold, triggering a passion and pleasure unknown in mortal or immortal existence. For these reasons and more, they were a favorite prey and their lives were child-brief. Little was known about how they lived, or where, or how they stayed alive at all in a world full of immortals who could seldom pause in their craving long enough to allow one to survive. They could not be brought across, nor could they be controlled hypnotically. For that reason alone, LaCroix had once told Nick, the Enforcers ordered killed every prized mortal that was discovered. They knew a vampire at first sight and could not be compelled to submit to control without their consent, which was of course no control at all. Even LaCroix had never encountered one. How they were created, for they were born only of mortals, was a mystery. For Nick, and Janette too, it was like meeting a unicorn, the rarest of rare. Particularly because this one had survived into adulthood, and appeared to be in her mid-thirties.

Maura told Vachon to take off with his friends, she'd finish the bar work. "Go on, Vash, you can't stay out as late as me." After barely a week she felt comfortable among them, knowing they wouldn't bring her to harm because it was Janette who had invited her into their circle. She sometimes teased her coworkers about getting up at the crack of doom. Besides, they all seemed to like her, and she them. They felt her ease with them, her lack of fear that didn't come from arrogance but from empathy. Everyone here was trapped by who they were, one way or another.

Maura set the last of the cases of empties in the alley to be picked up by the distributor on Monday, or picked clean by the denizens of the neighborhood for deposit money. When she turned to re-enter the club Nick was standing behind her.

"Damn! You all just can't help yourselves, can you, always gotta make an entrance!"

He looked a little sheepish. A sheepish vampire, that was new. "Sorry. I forget sometimes." He savored her scent. Honeysuckle and amber. It was the night before new moon, and it was becoming clear to him that the "legends" were not legends at all.

"So, you come here for a taste?"

Nick started. Could she read what he'd been thinking? "What?"

"You know, taste of nightlife off duty. Like that." She saw his recovery and knew how he'd taken her. "Oh brother, you're not gonna be one of them?"

"Them?" Nick echoed, rather stupidly he realized.

"One of them who just stand around and watch me like some animal in the zoo, or like some schoolboy drooling over the prom queen but no nerve to ask her out. I know I'm no raving beauty, but it's kind of like some guy looking at the most gorgeous woman alive. Naked." She thought for a moment, and added, "Or maybe like dogs in heat."

Nick seemed taken off guard, but his visceral response as she stepped closer was unmistakable.

Maura stood planted before him, hands on her hips. "Look, we know who we are. I could see it on your face the second we shook hands. Let's not play games. These are vampires. _You_ are a vampire. And _I _am every vampire's favorite fang candy. So why am I here? Or more to the point, how did I live long enough to _get_ here? You're a detective, Detective, so which do you crave more, blood or answers? Well step into my office, and I'll fill you in. I know it's _killing_ you." She paused a beat. "Unless that's redundant." Nick followed her inside with a bemused smile.

Janette's "office" was a sumptuous suite of rooms in the labyrinthine rear of the club, and she had given Maura use of one of the additional boudoirs that had traditionally been used for "entertainment" rather than sleeping. Elegantly furnished, Maura had nonetheless decorated it in her own style as best she could, with Indian silk scarves and the few books she still owned. A small statue of Ganesh sat on one end of an ornately carved Victorian style vanity, a statue of Lakshmi on the other.

"I suppose I'm giving a terrible first impression, inviting you to my room when we've only just met." Maura's smile made the joke obvious.

"Hey, I'm a cop, I can defend myself if I have to." Nick hadn't been in this room in quite some time, and took a look around at the small additions Maura had made. Indicating the bronze figurines he commented, "Covering all the bases, I see."

"Good fortune and money. What more to ask? At least I'm not a _Christian_."

Nick settled on the velvet sofa. "Would that be so bad?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, giving my life and responsibility up to the creation of a book of myths dictated by shepherds millennia ago. Sounds like a plan."

Nick laughed. "But you have these," he indicated the statues.

She was realizing she loved the sound of his voice, low, quiet. Gentle "They guide me. They protect me. They remind me to pay attention. They do _not _tell me what to do."

"I don't suppose anybody does," Nick mused with a smile. He really was liking this, meeting someone new who hadn't just had someone near and dear murdered. Her hair was deep red, her eyes a mottled green, her complexion Irish-ruddy. He did enjoy color.

Maura sat down at the other end of the sofa. "Okay I'll bet you're wondering lots of stuff. Like I did when I first encountered one of you. You wonder how I got this way, you wonder if I'm enchanted or something. You wonder how long I'll live, and most of all you wonder why living breathing vampire-bait would choose to consort with the undead." Nick made an unpleasant face. "Sorry. I'm not known for being P.C. How about 'viability-challenged'?" Now he laughed.

"I don't think I've ever heard anyone make jokes about it."

"She who laughs, lasts." Her smile faded a bit. "Anyway, the only difference between a laugh and a scream is modulation."

"So, tell me why, if I'm not prying." The answers to most of his questions were merely a matter of curiosity. But this intrigued him.

"Nah. Most people, dead or un-, couldn't care less who I am or where I came from. Hmm. Why. I guess I could say I subscribe to keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. But that's not really it. These aren't my enemies, they're actually helping me. Protection I guess. I show I'm not a threat to those of you I come to know, and in return you mostly don't drain the tap until I'm albino."

"Mostly."

She shrugged. "Well there have been some less than stellar characters. Like any culture, there are the nice guys and the assholes. Of course in the mortal world the assholes aren't usually fatal. So I count on the nice guys to cover my back."

"Does it work?"

"I'm still breathing, aren't I?" She sighed. "Look, I guess some would think it's weird to spill to a stranger. But my guess is we're not really strangers, are we?" She met his eyes. They looked right into her. Something was here, she felt it, something she'd never encountered before.

Nick was thinking the same thing. "I don't suppose we are. And I'm told I'm a good listener."

"Goes with your job, I guess. Anyway," she settled back, stretching her legs out on the sofa, feet stopping inches short of Nick's thigh. "As for the first question, I don't know, but I think it happened shortly after puberty, in Boston. At least that was my 'first time', if you know what I mean. One of you lot popped out of an alley, just like in the movies, and that's all she wrote. He almost killed me, but not quite. Somebody found me and brought me to the hospital and they transfused me to the limit. But whatever it was about me didn't get drained out with my blood. It took a few more 'encounters' before I realized what might be happening every new moon, and sometimes in between. But new moon is always the riskiest time."

"But you were a kid. How could you figure it out?"

"Instinct? Maybe this little gift came with accessories, I dunno. All I know was that in no time at all I could pick you guys out at fifty paces, but you couldn't do the same, not until you got within a few feet. See I started asking questions, between 'high seasons of the month', and found you have to get close enough to smell me which for a vampire is about maybe ten feet or so? No mortal notices it so it's gotta be pretty subtle."

Not so subtle, thought Nick, who was surrounded in her scent and trying not to respond. He'd noticed Maura had made no mention at all of family, but decided it would be better not to ask. In 800 years he'd learned what wasn't shared wasn't meant to be his business.

"Call it a vampire pheromone. Anyway it made me lots of new friends, mostly unwanted but some better than others. Only a couple, though. And they didn't last." Her face betrayed more weariness than sadness. "See, the Enforcers, are you surprised I know about them? They're not allowed to kill me themselves, they'd be tainted or something. So from time to time when they get convinced I'm gonna blow the whistle they send minions who of course have lesser powers. Though they do pretty well at persuasion and deceit. They keep me careful I guess, and moving around, but being a human target makes you cagey. My protectors weren't so lucky. They're bound by that quaint code of yours, but I'm not."

"It sounds like a hard life." Acknowledgment, not understatement, Maura realized, and exhaled in a derisive chuckle.

"At least. In between times, I just have to be alert and careful. I mean I still pack a mind-altering wallop to anyone who feeds on me, but nothing like the new moon. At the new moon, that first night especially, it is open season and I have had to lock myself up and then some. I used to try to get arrested about that time, but found out the hard way it's no guarantee. You guys are _everywhere_. So since my life is a prison, I do what prisoners do. I become one vampire's bitch to save myself from being everyone's."

The bitter humor didn't register with Nick, he was so focused on her casual description of continual torment. "Maura, I can't imagine," he pictured what she obviously left out, the fact that she probably wasn't entirely successful at hiding herself. "It sounds just like," he didn't finish the statement.

"Rape?" she finished for him. "Yeah." She sighed painfully now, and was unable to suppress a shudder. "More times than I can count. The only time I'm sort-of safe is in the daylight, so that is the only time I sleep. When I can." Nightmares were a given.

Unconsciously Nick had wrapped a hand around Maura's crossed feet. "I'm so sorry. I guess I always thought the worst that could happen to mortals at our hands was death, or betrayal, or to be brought across. But those things only happen once."

She smiled wanly. "Guess I got the gift that keeps on giving." She glanced at her watch. There were no windows in the room. "Hey it's getting early. You'd better get back to where you go. Tomorrow's new moon and it's time for me to hang them religious symbols I laugh at the rest of the month. Thank goodness for immortal superstition." She withdrew her feet from Nick's grasp and rose.

"Nice talking with you, Just Nick. Really. Not often I get to think out loud to an understanding audience."

"My pleasure. But Janette appears helpful," he waved his hand around the room and was surprised by Maura's cynical bark of laughter.

"Oh, yes, Janette. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely like her, and I am grateful for the job and the digs. But I haven't lived this long on naiveté. She'll get bored playing mother soon enough and then it's time to move on again, if she hasn't offered me up as an employee bonus. You know of course she set you up tonight."

He looked puzzled, then annoyed as reality broke. "She wanted me to meet you, not the other way around."

"Exactly."

"Janette believes that I should mix more with the not-quite-mortal."

Maura shook her head knowingly. "She thinks you'd enjoy some magic blood." His eyes narrowed. "You do know, don't you. Well no illusions among the not-quite-mortal, huh?"

"Perhaps," Nick suggested tightly, "I need to have a talk with Janette," then added more reasonably "Don't sell her short, though. She's capable of more than you might give her credit for. Even if she _is_ fond of meddling."

Maura stopped short at the door and turned to face him. "Oh, don't make anything of it. She really does have your best interests at heart, even if she is completely wrong. And believe it or not, I trust her. Anyone with that kind of power has no reason to lie."

They stood inches apart. Nick was still trying to ignore her scent. "Tomorrow is the new moon."

"Don't I know it. I have the next two days off, and I'm gonna spend 'em locked up here and hope for the best."

"I have the next two days off as well. You could stay at my place." He couldn't believe he was saying it. Being the host even for a few hours was not his strong suit, even when everyone went home after, and they had met less than two hours ago. Damn. What she was pulled at what he was, sure. But even the part of his mind that was clear told him she'd be safer with him.

She regarded him carefully. "If you're offering to play protector... I guess I could do worse, seeing you're a friend of Janette's." She clicked into the evaluation mode, weighing the risks against the benefits. This one seemed different, but they all did at first, didn't they?

Nick shook his head. "No, not like that. I'm offering a safer place than here, as someone who's got eight centuries' experience consorting with and dodging 'assholes'." She knew he was right. She also knew it could be a bad idea. She was drawn to him, to his quiet voice and open manner. No. It was too soon after the last betrayal.

"And by the way, I don't 'play' at anything." His steady gaze and gentle voice convinced her, in spite of herself.

"Okay. But you're proposing something that could be, uh, _risky _for both of us, you know? You could end up a little over your head." As if _she_ couldn't.

He smiled wryly. "Better me than the whole neighborhood. Come on, I'm parked out front."

She packed up her things into a couple of travel bags and joined him as he left the room, feeling slightly more impulsive than she believed was smart.

"Janette," he called to her as they crossed the bar, "Maura will be visiting with me for a couple of days."

Janette looked insufferably pleased with herself, Maura thought. "Be careful, Nicolas, don't let her get... in your blood."

Janette's smugness annoyed Maura. As they were leaving she pulled Nick around and shoved him against the doorframe, kissing him hard. "Might as well give her a show, huh?" she whispered, and he laughed quietly and pulled her tight against him, kissing her equally hard, mouth open, his tongue velvety cool in her mouth. It was a lame excuse for them both, but that first contact threw out Nick's last pretense of detached concern. Like a teenager curious about drugs, he wanted to know prized blood was like, and he wanted to know with _her_. He inhaled deeply before letting her go. "Sweet," he told her as they left Janette staring after them.

Maura was laughing that rich laugh he could almost taste. "Not bad for a dead white guy," she teased.

"I have my moments." He ushered her into the caddy, and drove home.

She explored his loft with interest, lingering over his paintings and books and expressing pleasure in his choice of color in the former.

"You miss the sunlight, don't you?" she asked him. "Most of you guys don't, or pretend not to, but I can tell by these paintings you're trying to bring it home."

He'd come down from putting her things in the bedroom. He'd use the couch. He could sleep anywhere, after all.

"Even after this long I try to remember what it felt like," he admitted. "I got a sun lamp once, but it wasn't the same. Still I stayed under it too long and got a very mortal-style sunburn." A rueful smile. "Sometimes I open the shades a bit during the daytime, to watch the light move about, as if it were a live thing."

Maura jumped as she heard the window blinds slide and lock into place.

"Custom made," Nick explained. "Daylight-proof."

"Asshole-proof?" she asked hopefully.

Nick replied with an apologetic shrug. "Remains to be seen. But they couldn't hurt."

She was rooting through the kitchen.

"Do you always rifle the kitchens of strange men?"

She turned to challenge, "Do you always invite strange women home?"

"Some 'stranger' than others," he shot back, and with a wave of his hand invited, "go ahead. I have nothing to hide, from you anyway."

She pulled the fridge door open and discovered the endless Bordeaux bottles that did _not_ contain Bordeaux, and smiled.

"Ah, the reluctant vampire. You know I've heard a bit about you already. From Janette. And the others."

Nick was seated on the sofa now, feet carelessly propped on the coffee table. "Naturally. Immortal gossip."

As she returned to the living room Maura elaborated, "Yeah, they've told me all about how you're trying to redeem your past 'sins' by way of your police work and, uh, _mitigating_, your nutritional needs. You're obviously at great pains to mix with mortals, and not for the usual reasons. Janette told me, in fact, you have a friend who is helping you to shed your fangs, so to speak." She didn't intend to sound dismissive, but somehow that's exactly how it came out.

"Well, we all have our goals, n'est-ce pas?" he answered shortly, and rose to turn on the stereo. Dvorak filled the room.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I think in just a few days I've picked up Janette's lousy habit of making every real concern sound droll." She approached where Nick stood, back to her, examining some cd's he already knew by heart. "Really, I find it remarkable that it has even occurred to someone that they might be able to change, let alone that they'd want to. I think I've been dealing with you guys for so long I think of you as some sort of ethnic group, you just are who you are, like an Arab or an Eskimo. Different history, different customs. I mean, you _do_ have your own shared cultural heritage in a way, don't you? And you do bring such things along with you to add to the mix! I can't imagine being of so many different places and times and people, knowing the limitations of life but being immortal."

When he turned abruptly to face her, there were pulses of gold in the blue eyes. "Maybe I'm just trying to have it both ways." He reached a hand to her waist. "After all, my version of life does have its advantages. Late nights, pleasant company," he leaned in close and his nose barely touched under her ear. She didn't want to step back, but she did, and his eyes returned to normal. He shook his head as if to clear it. "I'm sorry. I invited you here to be safe, not seduced."

"I've had worse offers." She was remembering their kiss at the club. "Don't be sorry," she patted his arm and went back to slouch on the luxurious leather sofa, her feet on the coffee table where his had been. "There's really nothing I can do about it, so I've learned to live with it. Even the best of intentions have their limits, I've seen that before too and I don't take it personally. Really, Just Nick," and he smiled at what he now recognized as his permanent nickname, "you're not betraying my trust or your honor or anything." Seeing her stretch and yawn, Nick realized it was after 3 a.m.

"Why don't you get some sleep. I've fixed things up for you upstairs." She followed him up and was impressed with the sleek decor of the bedroom. Spare lines, blacks and reds. "Wow," she bent to run a hand over the red silk velvet comforter, took in the black lacquer furnishings. "Very classy." He shrugged, but she continued, "No really, I've never met a broke vampire, but you don't all have the best of taste."

"Call it 'timeless' elegance," he laughed softly at his own joke. "I think you're having an effect on me. Your things are there," he indicated her bags in the corner. "The bathroom is down the hall on the right. I'll be downstairs if you need anything. Sleep well." She was bending to her bag when he hesitated in the doorway. "May I ask you something? Two things really."

"Sure." She stood and faced him, tall and lean silhouetted in the light from the hall, a red-gold halo around his head.

"Why do you trust me?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, Just Nick. I have so little left to lose, and have gotten used to picking the least threatening port in a storm, regardless of the fee. I hope you're not offended."

He leaned against the doorjamb. "No offense taken. And there's no fee here."

"Excuse me if I say that would be a first. But what's the second thing?"

He took a step in, then seemed to stop himself. "That fragrance, it smells like,"

"Honeysuckle and amber," she finished. He nodded. "I don't wear fragrance, it's just me. But you knew that, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did. Anyway, someone should bottle it. It's lovely."

"To you, maybe. To me it's the mark of Cain. I'd give anything to be rid of it. But maybe you're right, we'll get some chemist to bottle and mass-market it. I'll call it... 'Camouflage'."

Nick laughed kindly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed so much in one evening. "Perhaps my friend can help you. We'll go see her tomorrow. Sleep now, I've taken enough of your time."

"Thanks. It's been a while since I've slept in a real bed." When he'd left she undressed and put on a too-large t shirt with the words "The dark is afraid of me" on the front. A stupid play at bravery, she'd had it for years. She crawled into bed and was immediately overwhelmed by the feel of the black silk sheets, the warmth of the comforter. It was so hard for her to stay warm for very long, given the frequency of her blood loss. She was asleep in seconds.

The dreams came. They always did, night before the new moon. Every lie, every betrayal. Every useless run and hide, every discovery and attack. Pain, and confusion, and the awful inevitable repetition. It was always only a matter of time, til next time. No matter what she did or who promised to help. This time would be no different. She was trapped now in a strange place, in a strange room, and the only one who knew the way out is the one who would hand her over in the end. They always did. A figure in the doorway made her scream in desperation, in futility. It disappeared, and she fell back in bed, weak with relief, only to see it reappear. Now she wailed in resignation, in recognition of what would come next. Pain and terror, helplessness. That was the worst part. She scrambled off the bed, and the figure pursued, it was saying something she couldn't hear over her own screams. Crouched in the corner, back to the wall, nowhere to go, her cries turned to gasping breaths as it came closer. Again. And again. And again. It would never stop, never. But then the figure stopped short, and she heard her name spoken in a quiet soothing voice, calling to her, trying to calm her. "Maura, it's me, it's Nick, don't be afraid. You're safe here. You had a dream. I know, I have them, too. Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you." She shrank back as far as she could, but a hand touched her, grasped her wrist, her shoulder, touched her hair. Strong. Warm. Warm? If it was warm, it would be okay.

Nick had heard Maura's first scream as he sat reading on the sofa downstairs. She hadn't been up there for very long. He considered the upstairs to be secure in an everyday sense but since meeting her he doubted everything he'd been sure of. He flew to the bedroom door, seeing nobody but Maura, cowering in bed and crying out in fear. He took a step, and realized the cold in him would only terrify her more. Back in the kitchen he seized and hastily drank a full bottle, barely pausing to swallow. It would warm him for a while, long enough to keep him from being added to her list of terrors. When he returned to the bedroom with a bright candle she was crumpled in a corner like a hunted animal. Which was, of course, what she was among his kind.

"Maura, it's me, it's Nick, don't be afraid. You're safe here. You had a dream. I know, I have them too. Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you." He reached out to take her hand, to touch her and wake her and let her know he was no stranger come to harm her. She shifted and fought, "NO, no, no-no-no-no," less words than a series of panicked yips. He let her go.

"Maura it's all right, you're all right, you're safe. It's me. I won't hurt you. You're safe here."

The room was pitch black but for the pool of candlelight from the dresser. He could see every angle of her face, her eyes so wide they seemed to fill it, barely seeing him. "Safe?" she hissed, disbelieving. "_Safe_?" He moved closer and she seized the front of his shirt, "_Safe_!".

"Safe," he whispered, sighing with relief when she came to him. He held her tight, kept talking to her, "Safe Maura, I'm here, I'm watching, don't be afraid." She held on with a power that surprised him yet didn't, as if he were salvation itself.

"Safe?" she kept repeating, incredulous, "_Safe_?"

He lifted her and set her on the bed, tucked the covers around her and continued to hold her and whisper to her. Her fragrance enveloped him like a vapor. "Safe," he told her and finally, finally kissed her cheek and hair, not like they kissed at the club but gently this time, gently, to soothe and comfort her. Or so he told himself. She reached around him and pressed tighter against him as if offering herself in payment, anything, anything, "Safe, keep me safe, I'll do anything," she promised in a low desperate voice, "whatever you want, just help me, don't leave me to them." She bent her head back to expose her throat to him, and it struck Nick like a blow.

"No," he told her fiercely, holding her away from him, angered by the ugliness that drove her to such a bargain. "No more. You don't have to do that, you don't have to give yourself up anymore. Not to me, not to anyone, I won't leave you to them." The words came out without effort, and without regret. A bond was forming already, quite different from what Janette had imagined. She was beginning to calm down, focusing on his voice. How she loved that voice, already.

"I wish I could believe you, I want to believe you, I _need_ to," she told him in a rush, "but there have been so many promises, so many lies, I _want _to believe you..."

"You will," he promised. She wound her arms round him again, this time pressing her face into his shoulder.

"Make me believe it, make me believe."

He whispered into her hair, passionless kisses and passionate words. "I won't have to. You'll see. You'll believe all on your own."

Something was different this time, something she couldn't name, something that reached inside and told her he was the truth, even more than the few others who tried and failed. But part of her still fought it.

"You'll leave me to them, you will, you'll leave me or kill me or give me away, like the others. I've known them all," she protested, but still held tight to him. Wanting to believe. Waiting.

"You haven't known me." He was still, as quiet as he could be, "Maura Logue, you haven't known Nicolas de Brabant, Knight of the Second Crusade." Only he knew what a hollow title that was. "I won't leave you, I won't kill you, I won't give you away, you're safe here," he clenched his hand in her hair to hold her head against his shoulder.

"Nicolas de Brabant," she repeated in wonder, understanding now his tremendously long life and the torment he must have collected, and broke his grip on her to look him in the eye. She was slowly regaining the inner strength that had faltered in the dark. She took a deep breath, looked away to the candle, and back to his eyes.

Nick ventured a smile as he peered into her face. "Better now?" She nodded, a little hesitantly, a little sheepish.

"Yeah. I just, I have these dreams, the night before, you know..." she trailed off.

"I don't wonder."

"I'm not usually like this. I'm a strong person, really," she felt the need to explain. He hushed her.

"If you weren't, you wouldn't be here to tell me. Do you think you can go to sleep now?" He read her uneasy nod and added casually, "I'll stay for a bit, okay? Do you mind?"

She tried not to sound too eager, too desperate. "Sure. Which is your side?"

Before she could move he assured her, "You're fine where you are. I'm flexible." He waited until she was settled down on her side in bed, then went into the adjacent dressing room to change. When he returned in sweatpants and t shirt he caught her smiling.

"What?"

"I dunno, it just seems that some stuff is universal 'guy', you know? Sweats and t's for bed, mortal or im."

"Ah. Well, 'creature' comforts make for comfortable 'creatures'." He was beginning to get the hang of this vampire humor.

"You're catching on."

When he slid into the bed next to her without need of explanation, she relaxed completely, feeling drained of everything that had happened for the past months. Years. Safe. She felt safe here, and the feeling was so blessedly welcome she didn't bother to wonder why.

"You really don't have to do this, you know." She was sufficiently recovered to be a bit embarrassed by her display of abject dependence.

He was leaning up on an elbow as she spoke. Like a goddamn sleepover she thought. It was too weird to get her head around at the moment, but she felt oddly at home and at peace. For once.

"It's okay. Besides, you warm up the bed. It's nice." He leaned toward her a bit and told her as if in confidence, "And you smell nice."

"That's my _problem_," she responded woefully. He reached out a hand to smooth her hair back from her eyes.

"Not with me. Sleep well, Maura. Don't be afraid. I won't leave."

He settled down on his back, facing the ceiling, hands folded on his stomach. No reason really, it was just his most comfortable sleeping position.

"You wanna lily or something?" she ventured, her humor creeping back to cover the strangeness of the situation.

"Don't push it." But he was smiling.

"Sorry." She reached for his hand, and was surprised to find lingering warmth there. "I _am _trying to believe." He gave her fingers a squeeze.

"Don't worry, you will." He kissed the back of her hand and released it. "Good night."

"Yeah, you are." Pun intended.


	2. Chapter 2

She heard Nick's voice downstairs. As her fog cleared she realized she was alone in the big bed. She remembered reaching once for Nick while half-awake, and retreating immediately from the chill of him. Now she strained to find a clock, discovering one over her shoulder on the bookshelf. Just after 3pm. She hadn't slept that late, that soundly, well she had no idea when. She stretched experimentally, finding no end or edges to the bed. Damn. This cop knew how to live, even if he weren't quite alive. He knew how to sleep, anyway. She crawled out of bed, not bothering to pull on jeans. Hey, they'd slept in the same bed, after all, and her t shirt was long enough to cover what needed to be covered. She ventured downstairs carefully, still waking up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Just Nick? You got anything resembling coffee down here?" She smelled it at the same time she said it, and two heads

in the living room turned to see her. Two heads. Whoops. She was near the bottom of the stairs when she saw the guy with the receding hairline sitting in the cushy leather armchair across from the sofa. He wore an off the rack type Euro suit, and held a paper cup of coffee he had obviously brought in with him. Nick was dressed in black jeans and white shirt, open necked this time. It was way too late for her to retreat, so she just stopped where she was.

"Uh, hi there." The other guy's expression as he looked from Maura to Nick said he'd found the mother lode in terms of harassment potential. His eyebrows went up, and a grin of joyous discovery spread ear to ear.

"So, Nick, aren't you gonna introduce me to your new friend?" He rose and approached the stairs. Giving up, she descended the rest of the way and stood before him, refusing to be embarrassed. Nick was looking at him with an acerbic expression. Thank goodness he'd gotten up before she did.

"Don Schanke," the man said, extending his hand in exaggerated graciousness and looking back at Nick. "I'm Nick's partner. His _work_ partner." Nick rolled his eyes and got to his feet.

She wasn't sure she heard right. "Skanky?" she echoed. Nick suppressed a laugh as his partner blustered, "Schanke, with a c-h, okay?"

"Sorry." She shook his hand firmly. "Maura Logue, I'm Nick's guest for a couple of days. I work at Raven, and his friend Janette asked if he could take me off her hands. I've been living in the office for the past week, just got to town and no time to find my own place yet."

Schanke's "yeah, _sure_," smile was firmly in place. "Nice." He turned to Nick, who had come to stand near them. "That's _nice_ Nick, I know you're not much for extended company. So far, anyway. So Maura, hope you like red wine, it's all he has in the house."

She groaned. "Shoulda gone to the all-night place before we got here. Gawd, I can't _live_ without coffee in the morning."

Schanke looked confused. "It's after 3."

She gave him her "look", one that anyone could recognize, that said "duh". "I work nights, just like you guys. Anytime I get up is morning." She turned on Nick. "Jee sus, Nick, you mean you don't even have _coffee_ for guests?"

"Ran out," he said lamely, then took Schanke's nearly-full cup from him. "Here. Schanke drinks too much coffee. Affects his judgment," he looked sharply at his partner, and stilled his protests with, "Myra said so, remember? It makes you cranky, and nobody likes a cranky Schanke. Schank just came over to discuss some case stuff. He never remembers to call," glaring, "do you?"

"Well I always know when you're home. I just didn't expect you'd have a 'guest'." Maura could see he was very glad he didn't call this time. They all stood staring at one another until Nick took Schanke's arm and propelled him to the door.

"Thanks for coming by, we can use this information when I come in tomorrow. _After _my day off." He had the poor guy halfway out the door, calling over his shoulder, "Nice to meet you, Maura..." to which she replied as Nick slid the door shut behind him with a bang, "Uh, same here. _Thanks for the coffee!_"

Nick ran his hands over his face as he returned from the door. "Well I think that went well, don't you?"

"Don't fight it. Adds to the air of mystery."

He stopped and stared at her. "Just what I need. _More_ mystery."

"No kidding though, do you have anything here besides Chateau Moo-du-Pape?"

"Nope. I wasn't expecting me to have guests, either. Get dressed and we can go shopping. But first we'll go see my friend Natalie and discuss your body odor problem."

She gave him a look. "_Excuse _me?"

He tipped her a wink as she went upstairs to change. "Only your best friends will tell you."

The sun had just sunk beyond the Toronto skyline as they got into the car. "This is a pretty cool ride," she told him, "but the color is butt-ugly."

He looked wounded. "It's _classic_. Besides, people don't steal butt-ugly cars," he explained. When they got to the coroner's office he led the way to Natalie's autopsy lab. "I'll check first to see she's not with a 'client'," he offered, not wanting her upset by some cadaver in mid-dissection.

She stepped with him to the door. "As long as he can't get up, I'll be fine." He'd forgotten what she was and what she'd experienced.

The petite woman with the wildly curly brunette hair lit up as they entered. "Nick! Where have you been?" The light flickered a bit when she saw Maura bringing up the rear.

"Nat, this is Maura Logue." As Maura extended her hand, Natalie pulled off a rubber glove to shake it.

"Natalie Lambert. I've heard of you already."

Natalie cast a meaningful glance at Nick. "Schanke came by to say hello."

He shook his head wearily. "And a whole lot more, I'm sure."

Ignoring this, she spoke to Maura. "So what brings you to Toronto? Schanke said you work at Raven. Rough trade for a newcomer."

Maura shrugged. "I manage security. If you've done it in Boston and Vancouver like I have, nothing much else seems all that rough."

Natalie's eyebrows rose. "A _bouncer_. Nick, are you expecting trouble at your place?"

Maura could see things were not going to warm up quickly. "I'm not a 'bouncer', Dr. Lambert. I hire and manage them, and work out logistics for security and safety, evacuation in case of emergency, things like that."

"Still, you don't find Raven a little out of the ordinary?"

Maura could tell that Natalie figured she knew nothing about the true nature of the place or its clientele. Or Nick.

"Not in my experience." she answered truthfully, and changed the subject. "Nick tells me you got to know each other through work. Did you meet on a case?"

Nick smiled archly, indicating the autopsy table. "We met on a slab. At least that's where _I_ was." Natalie's eyes widened in shock. "She knows, Nat. She knows about all of it."

Natalie was completely taken aback. She'd never heard of this woman, and though she suspected they'd only just recently met it was obvious there was some connection between her and Nick. "Then she's," then turning to Maura, "you're..."

"No, I'm not. But I have what could be termed an 'ancillary condition'." As she told her story, Natalie forgot her suspicions and was drawn into the puzzle as she had been drawn into Nick's. At least to her it was a puzzle, with an eventual solution. Maura saw her own situation, and Nick's, as a casual if difficult fact of existence.

"Do you mind if I take a blood sample?" she asked Maura. "I'd like to look into this." There might be some link between this and Nick's condition, and she wondered if there were mutual answers to be found.

"No problem." Maura pulled up her sleeve as Natalie prepared a needle.

"I'm still pretty good with live patients," she tried to reassure Maura, who tipped her head back and laughed. Nick shut his eyes for just a second, luxuriating in it. Natalie saw.

"Are you kidding?" Maura inquired, "a needle is a welcome change."

Natalie's clinical curiosity was again displaced by a curt demeanor. "Yes, well, the company we keep, and all that."

"Come on, Nat," Nick objected. "She's told you the reasons."

"Right, Nick. Safety. Familiarity. Understanding. But tell me," she turned on Maura again, "why would a living breathing vampire addiction attach herself to a vampire except to addict him? To _control _him?"

Maura stood abruptly. She'd been willing to let Natalie's catty comments slide at first, but was finding herself too impatient to wait for Nick's friend to get educated. He hadn't told her the nature of their relationship and she didn't much care. "You call what I've lived with 'control'? You think a hooker controls her pimp? You think a gang rape victim 'controls' her _rapists_? This is _not_ my fault, Doctor. My veins flow with fucking vampire aphrodisiac, and I give off my own pheromone to advertise it. All of it _against my will_. Now Janette just introduced me to Nick here last night,"

Natalie cut her off as she turned to Nick. "Janette! What a surprise. It was only a matter of time before she fixed you up with a playmate. What luck she comes with her own recreational drug supply."

"That's _enough_ Nat." Nick warned, offended, and took Maura's arm to leave. She shook him off.

"_No_, goddammit. You're not my keeper!" She whirled on Natalie. "I met Nick last night. We talked, and he offered me a place to hide out during high season. Yeah, Janette definitely had something in mind pretty much like you said. She's all about 'control', after all. But Nick took me in, gave me a safe place until I can figure out what to do. I'm not after anything from him, not even his armed protection. No secret, no excuses, I would give up anything to any one of his kind for the opportunity to be used by one and _only _one instead of being handed around like an open bottle, or attacked at will and left for dead. Until next time. And I _have _done it, plenty, or I wouldn't still be alive if you call this living. In fact, since you're so interested, I tried to make the same bargain with _him_," she pointed at Nick standing in the doorway, "and he said no. He said I never have to give myself up like that again because he won't use me and he won't sell me out. And it's gonna take a while, but I plan to believe him as soon as I can. And you, madame Doctor, can take your superior scientific attitude and shove it."

She pushed past Nick, leaving him and Natalie to regard each other with mutual disappointment for entirely different reasons. "She's telling the truth, Nat. It's the only way she's been able to survive."

"Until you came along." Her voice was cold, hard-edged.

He took a step into the lab. "You want me to be 'mortal', to become 'human'," he reminded her in a low, tight voice, "well biology is only part of the formula." He turned on his heel and went after Maura.

He found her in the car with the doors locked, fuming. "Some jerk was sniffing around," she told him when he used his key to get in.

"Must be that red hair," he tried to tease her out of it.

"Lucky me," she snapped, turning to nail him with an evil glare that said "don't even try". "I get the assholes for _both_ reasons."

Nick tried to figure out how to characterize what just happened. "Natalie can be... protective where I'm concerned. We've been friends for some time."

"_Protective_," Maura observed acidly, "try 'proprietary'. She thinks she has the lock on who you are and how to 'cure' you and she thinks I'm threatening her experiment. She's trying to turn the beast back into a prince, and I might just get in the way of the payoff."

"It's not like that with us." He said it to everyone, it seemed. For him, at least, it was true.

"Tell _her _that." She cast an edgy look around. "Look, let's get some groceries and get back to your place before we have to beat the junkies off with a tire iron."

Nick drove them to Safeway and stuck close by her. It was an odd hour to shop, a bit late for after work and early for the night owls. He accompanied Maura with the air of someone visiting a museum. She made a beeline for the produce section, Nick trailing after. As she worked her way through carrots, pea pods, apples and pears, hefting and fingering each vegetable and fruit against an obvious inner meter, Nick realized something.

"You don't mean to tell me you're," he began.

"A vegetarian?" she finished brightly, brandishing a peach as if it were a shot put. "How the hell could you imagine anything else, with what I've been through?"

"So you've developed empathy with animals used for food," he observed sagely, or so he thought.

She approached and spoke so only he could hear, "I _am_ an animal used for food. But that's not really it. It's not empathy, it's nausea. Anything connected with consuming flesh or blood at this point just creeps me out too much. Well I'm glad you find that amusing, M. Sommelier du Sang." Nick was laughing.

"I don't know, it's just rich. You live among," he whispered the word, "_vampires_, but you're a vegetarian?"

"Think of me as health food," she smirked, casting a longing look at the garlic bin that Nick gave wide berth to.

"Uh-uh. No garlic."

"But I _love_ garlic," she whined, reaching like a frustrated child for a bulb of the elephant variety as Nick dragged her away.

"You'll get over it."

"Life as we know it isn't _possible_ without garlic," she continued to protest as he led her to the checkout.

"Life as _who _knows it?" He pulled out his wallet.

"Wrong," she told him, pushing his hand back toward his pocket, "you're not gonna eat any of this stuff. I'm staying with you, but I'm paying for the groceries." She paused and added mischievously, "Except maybe the wine. Hey," she asked the young guy checking out, "You got any Chateau Moo du Pape?" The kid looked confused and was about to call the manager as Nick intervened.

"Pay no attention to her, she's late for her medication," he told the kid as he hustled her to the door.

"Hey, I didn't get my change!" she complained.

"He just earned it," and he opened the massive trunk so she could put her bags in, but the kid chased them out to the parking lot and handed the money to Nick as Maura was getting in the caddy.

"Hey mister, your wife forgot her change."

Nick took it and thanked him, then handed it to Maura who sighed, "Swell. Now I'm the bride of Dracula."

As he got behind the wheel he told her dismissively, "Vlad was a piker." She cracked up, and he looked very pleased with himself.

Back in Nick's kitchen, Maura found gorgeous china and silver stacked in the cabinets and drawers as if they were Corelle and Farberware. She held a Limoges dinner plate up to the light, the shadow of her hand showing through it.

"I don't think I want to know where this came from," she murmured.

"The court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV," Nick announced casually

"Yeah, right. How come I keep hearing about you guys hanging with Copernicus, and Shakespeare, and now Marie Antoinette? How come I never yet met a vampire who just shoveled shit at the village cow barn? You're all just like mortals who go in for the 'past lives' crap, everyone's a celebrity. Aside from some dietary differences and specialized 'allergies' you really aren't all that different. A poser is a poser, mortal or im."

Nick was regarding her with a most curious smile.

"What?" she insisted. "You know I'm telling the truth."

"No, it's not that. It's just that you talk about these things, about your life with and knowledge of creatures that most people either hate or fear or simply don't believe in, as if it's the most natural thing in the world."

"Isn't it?"

He considered this for a moment, and had to admit she was probably right. "I suppose it is, at that. For us. I'm just not used to hearing it that way." He reached into a drawer and took out the knife he somehow knew she was looking for.

"More things in heaven and earth Horatio," she reminded him.

"If I'm not careful I might learn something from you," he admonished, standing too close. The rush of fragrance, of vampire pheromone, nearly staggered him as his eyes flashed gold. "Whatever you do," he muttered a little too gutturally as he handed her the knife handle-first, "don't cut yourself." He retreated hastily to the living room as she prepared her fruit salad, taking a glass of blood with him.

"Oh baby, you have outdone yourself," she congratulated as she tossed the diced white peaches and pears in the mixture of yoghurt, honey, and nutmeg. Nick appeared at her side.

"How would you know?"

"I was _talking_ about me. This is heaven in a bowl," she dipped her index finger and held it before him. "Taste. Come on, you _are_ allowed to _taste_."

He knew she wasn't playing any game with him. She simply was incapable of questioning any of this as out of the ordinary. And she was right. Tasting wasn't consuming, and wouldn't do him any harm. He took her wrist in a light grip, and his eyes never leaving hers, slipped the tip of her finger between his lips. She was right about that, too. Heaven, only this time on warm flesh. It had been so long since he'd bothered, even though he could, he'd been both a gourmand and a glutton in his native France before... had loved the smell and taste and texture of all manner of foods. It was his sensualism in general that got him in trouble in the first place, wasn't it?

Maura felt the cool velvety tongue again as Nick drew her finger first in and then out of his slightly open mouth, felt the soft grip of cool lips as he held onto the yoghurt. The lightest scrape of teeth. Normal teeth, for now.

"Sweet," he barely whispered, or did she only hear him think it? He released her hand and returned to the sofa.

After eating in solitude while Nick read up some case notes, she rummaged through his DVD collection, finding a copy of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."

"Can we watch this?" she asked. He saw the title and smiled.

"Sure. It's been awhile since I've seen it."

"Lemme guess. You were assistant director."

"Nah. I was in Russia, shoveling shit for the Revolution."

"Ha, ha," she slipped the disk in the machine and found the right remote, "ha." Then flopped on the sofa next to him. A little too close, apparently, because he slid to the far end.

"Don't worry," she purred in a dead-on imitation of Janette, "I won't _bite_."

"It's not you I'm worried about. If you want popcorn, there's microwave stuff in the kitchen cabinet."

"Maybe later." She settled into the opposite corner of the impossibly cushy sofa, and made herself comfortable. "Where's the lights?" she asked. Nick reached for yet another remote and killed them, so they were lit only by the silvery glow of the black-and-white pictures flickering on the screen.

"I hope you're not a commentator," she confessed as the opening credits ran.

"Maybe later."

When the movie had ended and Nick faded the lights up a bit, he noticed Maura looking a little disoriented.

"What is it? You feeling all right?"

She looked at him as if struggling to process some foreign concept. "It's the new moon."

"Uh-huh." He tried not to let on he noticed the difference, and how hard it was to keep his distance.

"It's the new moon and I'm sitting with someone I like, someone I trust, watching a movie. I'm not running and knowing I won't get away, hiding in a dark corner, begging for mercy, and never escaping. I'm here, and I'm not terrified or wounded."

Nick smiled gently at her. "It's what you deserve, what anyone deserves."

She looked around, wonderingly. "Safe," she murmured.

"Safe," Nick echoed. And, lightening the mood, "Safe to go to bed, if you're tired. And I think you are."

She had to agree, not bothering to suppress an extravagant yawn. She said goodnight headed for the stairs, but stopped and returned to the sofa where she knelt in front of Nick, hands on his knees.

"Thank you," she told him earnestly, and looked at him very hard so he'd know what she meant. Just in case, she continued, "You think you know what you're doing here, but you don't. Even I can't explain how I feel right now, it's that new to me. You think you're just doing the right thing, helping out someone in trouble, but it's so much more than that."

Her proximity was making Nick supremely uncomfortable as he engaged in the vampire version of battling against a raging hard-on. He wanted her more than any mortal he had ever had, or wished he had. In a moment she sensed it, and took her hands off of him.

"Sorry. I don't want to make this more difficult for you."

The gentle smile again. "Don't worry. It's not more difficult than I allow it to be. Go on to bed. I'll sleep down here tonight."

He didn't have to tell her why. Her body was pumping out vampire pheromone like crazy and the only defense was distance. She wanted badly to give him a hug, a kiss goodnight, something to express what an enormous shift he'd made in her life, but she withdrew and, wishing him goodnight again, went upstairs to get ready for bed.

The shadow over shoulder didn't frighten her, nor the glowing golden eyes she turned to see gazing at her as she brushed her hair. His hand was outstretched, not quite touching, and she felt that he wanted her to push him away. She was convinced that if she told him to go he would find a way to comply. But she didn't want him to go.

"It's okay, Nicolas de Brabant," she told him quietly. "It's okay you're here. You brought me here, and you belong here."

She put down her brush and turned to face him again. For once in her haunted life it didn't feel like endless some variation on an inescapable theme. The look on his face was more desire than hunger, curiosity and need, not power. He was drawn to her as others were, but it was almost as much against his will as it had always been against hers. When he opened his mouth, barely, to speak she could see the fangs.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, his voice a deep echo, "I'm weaker than I thought."

"You're not anything you shouldn't be."

The glow in his eyes faded as a shadow of immeasurable sadness crossed his face.

"Don't," she took a step closer, and the glow returned, his breath modulating to a guttural purr. "It's okay, really. I want to know too." She took one of his cold hands and held it in both her own, blew on it as if she could warm him from outside, knowing she couldn't. His fingers closed on hers, gentle but humming with tension.

"I wanna know," she confessed, "what's it like to share instead of being robbed, and maybe held for once, just held, instead of subdued." She touched his face, and he turned his open mouth to rub his teeth against her palm. "Just this once, okay? Just this once." She said it as if it were her idea alone.

When she kissed him he pulled her hard against him and seized the back of her head with a snarl to hold her mouth to his. Cool, velvety tongue. It was an experiment, she lied to herself, and his strength didn't frighten her any more than the growling. The truth was this was the only semblance of passion she knew, an expression of connection that, though loveless, made human lovemaking seem childish and superficial. There had been a few who were less than violent, though far less than tender, and she'd taken what little solace there was to be had in close contact even as she was being used as a drug of choice. She knew she was likely expecting way too much from this Nick, but figured he might at least be more careful than most. If in the end there was a bargain to be struck, better with one who was given to self-reproach; it might be safer.

Nick had fought this, and in what was left of his logical brain he still did. He was a gentle 'man' in everyday terms but had never been a gentle vampire. He had seized, and immobilized, and drawn dry like his teacher, even when fooling himself by playing at romance. Maura was right, he wanted to know, was prized blood a myth, or a relief, or another road to hell. It had been so long since he had known mortal blood he feared what it might do to him, especially her blood, especially now. What he might do to her. That fear only fueled him.

It was Maura who propelled them to the bed, pushed Nick down on his back and lay atop him, pulled open his collar so she could kiss his throat where no pulse beat. Abruptly he grabbed her shoulders and held her away from him, eyes nearly blue again as he gained control of himself one last time.

"You want this..." he both asked and stated as a fact. She nodded.

"I wanna _know_," she whispered. "consent, I want to know consent…"

"Then we'll both know," he answered and rolled her to her back, leaning over, no longer trying to disguise the rumbling growls that escaped him. And she shut her eyes to feel him, covering her face and neck with kisses, giving her no room to respond. Kisses. She had never known them from the others, even the kinder ones, no kisses but the unavoidable lip-touch at the first bite. She'd forgotten what they felt like, if she ever really knew.

Any doubts Nick had were removed as she gripped him to pull him closer. "Show me," she muttered, "show me it's different now," and he ran his open mouth over and over, up and down the side of her neck, teasing her, teasing himself, holding the curiosity in anticipation, then reared back with a hiss and fell into her like a dream.

And the last lucid thought that flashed in her mind was, _It doesn't hurt... but it always hurts... _and then her head dropped against his arm as she breathed through half opened lips, "oh." Revelation.

Flowers and honey, the first human blood he he'd had in a hundred years, and it was nothing like he remembered. It used to taste metallic-sharp, exciting, it drove his madness higher until it was sated. This was... honey and flowers. She tasted as she smelled, sweet, rich beyond imagining. And, after barely a taste, he was drawn into a whirlpool of color and an intoxication beyond anything he'd ever felt. He'd had opium addicts, and absinthe drinkers, people whose blood was laced with hallucinogens and tainted with narcotics, and he'd felt their effects as he fed on them. This was different, this was floating weightless yet rushing beyond speed, instead of firing an insane passion it seemed to spin it into euphoria. No shame, no sin, no regret. And he knew her now, knew her completely, but unlike the others it didn't come to him in a frenzied rush of tumbling images. He felt it all, pain, shame, relentless determination to survive, saw every kindness and evil done and knew where it damaged and strengthened her. It came all at once and separately, and it came in an easy progress of time and sense he could never explain or understand. She didn't feed any hunger he'd known in 800 years, but satisfied an inexpressible craving that had never been apparent until it was being relieved. Finally, he could be gentle. The rough growling in his throat smoothed to a rumble, then a hum, his mouth working softly against her skin like an infant nursing.

Light, her head was filled with light, the darkness that had always swallowed her with the others wasn't dispelled so much as negated. Every nerve was calmed and fired simultaneously, every need triggered and fulfilled, she spun in aching slowness through a thick sea of color and sensation that made any physical pleasure she'd known pale in comparison. No fear, no pain, no regret. She felt herself growing farther away and in a very distant sense knew she was fading. She wasn't frightened. If after all the darkness and pain her own body had brought her she was to die now, suffused in light and pleasure with a gentle humming in her ears and an embrace that would not leave her bruised, it would be a welcome end.

Some final remnant of Nick's awareness told him to stop. He was not feeding his typical hunger, after all, there was no survival imperative or blood madness that kept him blind until his victim was near death. There was just enough left to remind him to be careful, to stop now, enough. With near physical pain he did stop, withdrew his fangs and pressed a tongue-tip into each tiny wound to stanch the flow of blood. The marks would fade in hours. He felt drugged but not weakened, still in the grip of a sensation he couldn't identify. It was as if he had consumed joy. Every dark corner had been lit, and shown to be empty of demons. Instinctively he knew the feeling would fade, but for now he was immersed in a state he had never known even in his before-life: peace. He rested his head against Maura's shoulder, and felt the tremble begin deep inside of her.

Cold. She felt it then, a core-deep cold that somehow didn't ache like the other times, spreading from her bones and seizing her with shaking. She felt a fiery heat outside of her. Nick, Nick was holding her close against him and sharing the blood-warmth she had given him. She was too weak to hold onto him, but he pulled the quilt around them and trapped his heat that went beyond any of the times he had drained bottle after bottle. Her head still fallen back on his cradling arm, she looked at him through half-opened eyes, seeing the gold in his cross over slowly to blue. He was smiling, a trace of her blood on his lips.

"Sweet," he pressed into her hair and cheek in a slurred whisper, "sweet." His lips burned her. She didn't care. He was keeping her warm instead of leaving her alone, and so very cold. Sharing instead of taking, giving some back of what she'd just given to him. Her trembling faded and she was lulled to sleep by his gentle grip and the quiet sound of his voice. "Sweet."

Somewhere in the next hours Maura separated from Nick as his body temperature cooled. She had recovered sufficiently from her blood loss (another "gift" was her body's ability to replenish itself fairly quickly if things didn't go too far) to regain some of her own body heat, and rolled away to settle into her own separate sleep. He wouldn't wake, wouldn't even stir in the barest consciousness, until well after sunrise. She knew his kind didn't need the same kind of restorative sleep as mortals did, it was more of a metabolic recovery, often not long after feeding. Sometimes those she knew rested only two or three hours, but their bodies shut down so completely it was the one time they were, truly, death-like. Maura had also learned that there was nothing magical about the hours that the sun was up, as long as its light could be avoided. She had even known one vampire who kept near-mortal hours, running a computer business from the bricked-up apartment building he'd purchased with the millions he'd accumulated in centuries of life. Because of his work and relationships with mortals Nick's habits tended to overlap the traditional day/night divide.

She woke slowly, easily, opening an eye to see only the tiniest crack in the blackness, where a harmless sliver of light leaked in at the corner of the blinds. The clock read ten-thirty. A short night's rest for most, but she had become accustomed to furtive sleep, wakened by sudden noises that may or may not have been harmless night sounds. This time, as the night before, she'd slept soundly. It felt like ten hours to her. When she climbed out of bed and lit the bedside candle she noticed the pinkish stains scattered on her t shirt. Nick's blood-tinted sweat. She peeled off the shirt and tossed it aside as she reached for his lush silk kimono where it was flung carelessly at the foot of the bed. Everything she found here felt so good against her skin... well he'd said at one moment or other that he'd been a sensualist when he was a mortal. This must be hangover, she figured. Vampire senses were, after all, more keenly sensitive than a mortal's.

She still felt a little dizzy, a little lazy. It was actually rather enjoyable, like the prolonged languor before waking. Except she _was _awake. And desperately thirsty. She knew she'd left apple juice in the fridge, so she went downstairs to the kitchen to get some.

The voices coming from the living room didn't register until she'd padded down the stairs to the living room calling, "Nick? Didn't get enough of German Expressionism last night?"

She never expected to find Natalie, obviously just arrived, showing him what looked like a medical file. After yesterday's bad beginning she didn't expect to see her here for some time to come.

"Hi, Natalie. Look, I want to apologize for my nasty outburst yesterday," she figured it was a good way to start, and really didn't think much about how she was dressed or where she'd come from. It was such an oft-repeated morning after scene she didn't think twice about the new context.

"Oh, that's," Natalie began, then shut up abruptly when she turned her head to face Maura. It wasn't that she didn't know the woman was staying here, in fact she'd decided that she'd been silly. Nick forged relationships differently than mortals, and this certainly was a different sort of mortal anyway. But there she was, obviously naked under Nick's robe, shiny red hair askew, smiling lazily if earnestly, the kimono wrapped carelessly and wide open at the neck. The neck. The marks that hadn't quite completely faded, surrounded by a round red bruise where he'd tried so hard to be subtle and failed so miserably. Even Nick seemed taken aback to see it. "Vampire hickies" Maura had always called them in the past; they could persist well after the bites healed.

Natalie looked from Maura to Nick, then back to Maura. "Well I see you two have gotten better acquainted," she shut the folder with an unsatisfying-sounding slap and turned to leave in a hurry. "I brought the blood test results by," she said tightly, "I'm sure any doctor could help you look them over." She was at the door and sliding it open before Nick could react. He looked sharply at Maura, who could do nothing but shrug, and ran after Natalie as she fled.

'Nat, come on, don't run off like this." He flew down the stairs and caught up with her as she came out of the freight elevator. She confronted him angrily.

"It looks like you're the one who's running off, away from everything we've been trying to do. For heaven's sake Nick, I don't blame her for finding shelter with someone she knows instinctively won't hurt her, for entering into the only arrangement she knows. But you," she broke off, struggling for words.

"You talk like I'm some kind of vile seducer. Or maybe you think Maura is. Nobody's taking advantage here, no matter what you think. And I'm not running off from what we've been trying to accomplish. I've come a long way, we both know that."

Natalie's reflexive rage seemed to be cooling, but her displeasure was not. "And you're thinking maybe it's far enough, aren't you? I know you, Nick, you're like a drunk who wants to be free of the hangovers but can't face the idea of never having another drink. It's why you keep the bottles, even as you half-heartedly try the things I come up with. You just can't let it go, no matter how much you think you want to be mortal. And now you have a new reason."

Much of what she said was true, but not all of it. "Nat, you can't understand what's happening here," but he was powerless to express it to her, because neither did he. He'd never experienced a more powerful joining, not with Janette, not with anyone. Though it appeared outwardly to be the start of yet another of Maura's protector/dependent arrangements, he knew they were meeting as equals.

"No, Nick, I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't. I'm gonna need a while to think about this." She turned and opened the front door. Nick stepped back reflexively as sunlight poured in just over the threshold.

"Nat, _please_, this can't be worth throwing our friendship away."

She didn't look at him as she left. "We're both going to have to figure out what it's worth, because right now I just don't know."

He stood watching as she drove away. When he returned to the loft Maura was standing in the doorway clutching his robe around her as if for protection. It was all about protection, wasn't it? Protection from danger, protection from life. Protection from such a dangerous and lonely life that neither one of them had ever suspected it could be otherwise. She went inside as she saw him approach. When he slid the door shut she was in the kitchen washing a wine glass. She didn't look at him as he entered.

"I'm sorry. That was stupid, I should have been more careful."

"She would have found out anyway. We're friends, we have no secrets."

"I think maybe there are better ways to find out, though, than me traipsing in like the Whore of Babylon."

He stepped in her way as she tried to leave the room. "You're nobody's whore."

"First time for everything." She pushed past him and went upstairs to get dressed. When she returned to the living room she grabbed a book randomly from Nick's collection, a history of mutinies. Rebellion, how appropriate. She sat on the sofa all day, sullen, reading silently. What a fucking world, she finally found what might be some escape from the hell she'd been living and even then something was going wrong. She indulged in some internal self-pity. Fucking vampires. Let 'em all take a walk in the sun.


	3. Chapter 3

Maura had wanted to go out tonight, before Natalie came. Fuck it, she thought, she was going out dancing at Raven. New moon be damned, she'd be safer there than most anywhere else. Vachon and Vargo would watch out for her. She ran up to the bedroom, ignoring Nick as he looked up from his computer and followed her with his eyes. He wished he could convince her things would be okay, even if he didn't know how they could make it happen.

Maura slipped into tight black jeans and a tailored purple blouse open to _there_, brushed out her hair and sprayed on a little Emeraude. It didn't fight with her natural fragrance but seemed to mask it a bit. At least they had to get within a foot or two to pick her out. She grabbed her jacket and bag and took the stairs two at a time.

"Gimme a lift, will you?" Nick was standing at the window now, staring out the open blinds at the stars.

"What? Where do you plan to go? Tonight, of all nights."

"I wanna go out. I feel _good_, Nick, for the first time in I don't know how long. For once I don't feel like the blue plate special. I feel like a _person_. And I don't know how long it'll last, so I don't want to waste it, okay? I wanna go dancing. Do you know how long it's been since I've really gone dancing?"

In spite of his concern, a smile crept over Nick's face. She did seem transformed after her sulk, eyes lit with a fire he hadn't noticed since they'd met. Then he was a bit ashamed, feeling rather like some mortal man who believed his sexual prowess changed women's lives. "No, I don't think you've told me that."

"Probably since back when you were shoveling shit for the Revolution, if I'd lived that long." She whacked him with her purse. "Come on, please? I relieve you of all responsibility. I'll catch a lift home. You can come back here and brood over your fight with Natalie if you want. "

"We didn't 'fight'," he corrected her.

"Well _somebody _did. Maybe she was verbally shadow-boxing. Come on, you could use a real night out too. When was the last time you really had fun? I mean you guys _are_ allowed to have fun without killing people, I've seen it happen."

He was tempted. Something felt lightened in him since he'd taken her and, like her, he didn't know how long it would last.

"Okay. But don't expect me to dance."

"Yeah, right. You are absolutely the _first_ stuffy vampire I've met, ever."

Janette seemed surprised to see Maura and Nick arrive through the front entrance shortly after ten.

"Did you forget something last night, cherie?" she asked Maura solicitously, casting a knowing look over them both. Though no mark remained on Maura's throat she could tell, be damned she could always tell, Nick thought, just like Schanke said his mother could always tell when he got laid as a teenager.

"Non, merci, just came to play tourist," Maura bounded to the bar to get a drink.

"Champagne, Vash, I'm celebrating!" she called to him over the music and general noise. He was surprised to see her again, and on the new moon. Even Vachon, the most mild-mannered of his circle, felt his fangs tingle when she got within a few feet.

"Celebrating what?" he wanted to know, pulling out a split of Janette's French reserve.

"The new moon!" she announced. "I'm celebrating the new moon and the fact that I'm not locked in a dark room tonight! Is that good enough?"

"Sure," Vachon popped the cork and poured a flute for Maura, handing her both the flute and the small, flowered bottle. "Whatever works." He understood the significance of her being out tonight, but not why she felt safe doing so. He figured Nick probably was keeping an eye on her. She looked for Nick; he was talking with Janette in the shadows. She held her ever-present glass of Merlot and blood. Vampire boilermaker. Maura drained her glass on the way across the room, and the alcohol made her immediately giddy. She hadn't eaten in some time. By the time she reached Janette and Nick she had to hold the bar to steady herself.

"Take it easy with that, I don't want have to carry you to the car."

She smiled and patted his arm. "No worries." She polished off the rest right from the bottle, laughing as Janette's cool cracked with the raising of an eyebrow. Nick felt a rush of warmth in his gut at the sound.

"Well come on, Nick, you gotta dance with the broad what you brung."

"Oh, no," he shook his head with a smile. "I told you, no."

Janette was amused. "But Nicolas, you were always the first to search for a partner when the music started. When did you change?"

"Yeah, Nick, you're 800 years old, you must know every dance in the universe." She took his arm and leaned against his side. Together with the perfume she wore, her scent triggered that whirl in his head again. And again, he was tired of fighting it. He tightened an arm around her waist, pulling her hard against him. "All right," he warned, "but don't complain if you can't keep up."

He was, as she'd guessed, an amazing dancer. Well anyone who could fly, she figured, must be pretty good on the dance floor too. She just never imagined _how _good. He moved with a feral smoothness, holding her eyes every minute with his own, smiling at her, laughing at himself. He led, he followed, he spun her and held her strongly to gyrate with him as the d.j. played the dark, bass-heavy music the club goers favored. Finally the music calmed into a slowly pulsing rhythm. She took a step back, thinking he'd want to go back to the corner, but his grip became firmer. "Don't go," he told her quietly, and turned her against him where he could press her cheek to his shoulder. She could feel him inhale deeply.

"Nick, come on," she warned half-heartedly. How long, how long, how long, her mind kept repeating. Since she'd had fun, since she'd been genuinely attracted to someone, since being close meant enjoyment and not desperation or pain?

"Sshh," he whispered in her ear, "we're having fun, remember?" But when his lips grazed her neck she lifted her head from his shoulder. His eyes were glowing golden, mouth open a little, exposing the barest fang tips. He didn't even try to hide it. She shot a glance around the dim dance floor, bodies swaying and merging between the dancing shafts of light and waves of mist. He pursued her gaze, made her look at him. "We're among friends," he murmured so low she could barely hear, "it's the new moon," he kissed her and her mouth opened to him before she let herself think of anything else besides being pressed full length against him, one of his hands massaging the small of her back and the other spread across the back of her head, tipping it to the side, holding her, holding her. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and they kissed wildly as if they were utterly alone. The song continued, the dance continued, nobody noticed. Except Janette. Maura felt Nick's teeth here and there, her chin, her lower lip, and finally the barest nip at her throat, more a kiss than a drink, but he got the rush just the same, and stood still with her tight in his arms to feel it flow through his body.

"Nick," she muttered against his shoulder, and he knew he was holding her too tightly and let her go, but laid a finger on her lips.

"Sshh." His fingertip traced her lower lip for just a second, and his expression was troubled. "Come on," and with an arm around her shoulders he led her back to where Janette stood.

"Be careful, Nicolas," she told him. "Leave some room for reason..." yet she reached out a hand to barely touch Maura's hair. "This one could be more dangerous than anyone, even as she tries not to be." Oddly, Maura sensed no threat in her words. Just a warning to an old friend who was more than a friend, as if even she hadn't realized what her plan might lead to. Nick didn't answer but stepped in to give Janette a kiss. "Good night." They drove home in silence, and Nick slept on the sofa. When he woke some hours later Maura was gone, leaving behind a single phrase written on his French parchment stationery: "room for reason".

She'd pretended to go to bed when they got back even though it was barely midnight, knowing he wouldn't come upstairs. Not tonight. Once she knew he'd slipped into his death-sleep, she packed her things. She hadn't intended to leave a note because it seemed too maudlin. As she put her hand on the door, though, she realized that given the situation he would assume she'd come to harm. So she went to his desk, wrote three words, and left it on the coffee table where he'd find it when he woke. She slid the door shut as quietly as she could, but even that small noise betrayed her exit and reached Nick deep in his slumber as if some filament between them had snapped. His eyes opened only seconds later.

At Raven, the night was winding down in the hour or two runup to sunrise. Even the mortals, and there were many, fancied themselves creatures of the night. The employed ones were denizens of the graveyard shift, and all made a habit of shunning the daylight if only for fashion. Dungeon bunnies, they were called derisively by the staff behind their backs.

"Vash, where's the boss?" she asked. He shot a look toward the door of the office she'd recently vacated.

"In back, but she's 'entertaining', so can you wait a bit?"

She took a seat and sipped a Coke for the next fifteen minutes or so. A darkly handsome man, dazed, very young, stumbled out of the office. Knowing Janette, as she did after only a week, she had him six ways from Sunday. Adding another few minutes for her to collect herself, Maura approached the slightly open door and knocked. "Janette? Can I come in?"

"Of course you may." If she didn't know better she'd swear Janette was drunk, but knew her intoxication was of an entirely different sort. She reserved her sexual/vampiric encounters for only the most desirable young men, and they would stand in line if such a thing was permitted. It was not. Janette alone made the choices, and the schedule.

She found her boss reclining on the Victorian fainting couch in the corner, wrapped in a silk kimono remarkably like Nick's. Or not so remarkably.

"Back so soon, Maura? I thought you and Nicolas had some things to discuss." She almost sounded genuine.

"Not so much. Look, Janette, I don't want to leave you in the lurch here but something's come up and I've gotta move on. I just came to collect my pay for the week.

"'Move on'? But you've only just arrived." Now Janette sat up and arranged her robe. She was obviously taking this seriously in spite of the lingering effects of her 'afterglow'.

"Look Janette, let's not play games. We both know, we _all_ know, that you set Nick and me up to see what would happen. Well you've seen, and so have we. And I may have traded my self respect for protection in the past, but I won't trade anyone else's. So I think it's time this little experiment comes to an end. I do appreciate your help, Janette, even if I understand that philanthropy isn't your immortal ambition."

Now Janette stood and gestured to a chair. "Please, Maura, don't be hasty. Sit down for a moment." Maura remained standing, so Janette sat down with a shrug. "I admit, I did plan to introduce you to Nicolas as a... diversion. I also admit I had no idea what the result would be. You are a mystery to all of us, you can't blame me for my little game of 'what-if'." Stony silence. "Or perhaps you can." She waved an elegant hand. "But there is no reason to walk away from our arrangement, and endanger yourself again. I can help you find safe accommodation here in Toronto. Or we could convert some of the empty rooms in this building into a flat for you. Even in this short time I have come to appreciate your services, and the staff seem to like you. Beyond their customary interest in mortals, of course." At this Maura had to smile.

"They do seem to treat me more as a colleague than a potential meal." A nod from Janette. Unknown to Maura, she could sense Nick's approach. She saw no reason not to keep the woman here until he could speak with her. She had encountered so many loose ends in her time, she found them distasteful when they could be avoided. And Nick did seem to care for her already. But Maura was insistent.

"Thanks, but no thanks, Janette. This was all just a bad idea, and I'm not blaming you. Who knows, we might have met anyway since he comes here so often. But really, now I'd just like to collect my pay and hit the road."

Janette made a great show of slowly opening the antique safe, taking out the likewise locked antique cashbox, and counting out a pile of bills to hand to Maura.

"Janette this isn't what we agreed on. It's way too much."

Janette shrugged philosophically. "It's only money, cherie. And besides, you'll probably be needing some... what is that quaint mortal term?... 'traveling cash'."

"Okay, then. Thanks, I mean it. You're better than you think," and Maura pocketed the money, exchanged kisses on the cheek with Janette (who nearly swooned at her fragrance), and left the office.

The club was empty now, strangely so, the strobes dark, low room lights not quite dispelling the shadows. Vash was gone from behind the bar, and Vargo, who should have been cleaning up, was inexplicably absent. Oh well. Goodbyes are commonplace for vampires, they exchange so many over centuries. She turned to leave when she saw him.

Nick stood between the ornate pillars by the front door, her bags at his feet.

"I don't need room for reason."

"Consider it a gift." She stayed where she stood, afraid to move closer.

"It isn't yours to give."

She didn't enjoy being the cause of the pained expression on his face. She knew it wasn't only because he was losing something he'd never known he'd want. He felt he'd let her down, that his immortal passions had sold her out as thoroughly as others had done in her life. How could so many emotions burst forth in just a couple of days?

"You're nothing you shouldn't be, Nick. If I can believe it, you can too."

He gestured emptily. "Don't go. Please. At least accept Janette's offer." Vampire telepathy, he didn't insult her by pretending it didn't exist.

"_Why_ Nick? Why is it so important? Is it that my leaving would interfere with your immortal absolution? _That's_ not mine to give either."

"That's not it."

"What then? I don't want to fuck up the balance you've managed here, I don't want to destroy what friendships you have and trip you up on the road to salvation. You're the one good thing I've encountered in this unholy existence, do you really think I want to help you destroy yourself?" She realized her final paradox was to harm the only one who really helped her. She wanted to stay, forever, and continue whatever connection they'd found that might keep them safe from their nightmares. But she couldn't sell him out the way she'd been sold out. She wouldn't. He was walking toward her. She backed away, her resolve faltering.

"I 'balance' between those who want me to become what I can never be and others who insist I need to be who I was so long ago I can't remember him, and don't want to. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and so far nobody but you has seen it that way. You want to hate Janette for introducing us? So do I. It would have been so, so easy just to keep on keeping on. There's comfort in misery, if you're used to it. But now it's too late to go back. Trust me, I've tried."

"I don't want to destroy you."

At this he laughed quietly. "After 800 years, do you really think all it would take is a little honeysuckle and amber? Nothing in you can hurt me. You make me laugh, you listen to my thoughts, you keep my friends guessing. And all in less than seventy-two hours. Aren't you curious what might happen next?" He moved still closer, reaching a hand to barely touch her cheek. "You feed my dreams. How could that destroy me? Don't go, Maura, please. It doesn't have to be this hard. You don't have to save me, you don't have the power. Why put yourself at risk for nothing? I'll give you a safe place, and you can tell me vampire jokes." When he got no response, he leaned closer, "come _on_, don't be so dramatic. Come home, we'll watch a movie, I'll sleep downstairs."

She was frowning. Home. He said it so casually, and it sounded absolutely right. He wanted her to come home, and she wanted to go. Tables had turned somehow, he was approaching her angst with the casual logic she'd shown him since they'd met.

"I'm not being dramatic," she protested.

"Prove it," he challenged. "Because if you leave now everyone will just keep believing their own gossip. That you were out to use me and left when I figured it out. That I can't keep even a moderate hold on my 'traditional' weaknesses. Do you really want to concede to Natalie?" Maura raised an eyebrow. How transparent. He reached an arm around her, whispered in her ear, "Come _on_. I won't bite." She reared back to give him an evil look, and he conceded, "Well maybe just now and then."

"You are a bastard, you know that?"

He kissed her cheek. "I've had 800 years of practice. You're tired, let's go home. I don't wanna go back alone."

"But you've always been there alone." He hadn't told her, but she knew anyway.

Now the joke left his voice. "But I wasn't _lonely _until you left, and after only two days. Go figure."

Maura heaved a great weary sigh and gave up, dropped her head to Nick's shoulder in defeat. "Okay. Okay. But if you start to go south, I'm gone. Got it?"

A kiss in her hair. "Got it. Which way is south?" he asked with the hint of a grin, "so I can avoid it?" She gave him a shove, and went back to the office where Janette didn't have to listen to hear every word.

"Welcome back. You're on the schedule for tomorrow night. There's a new bouncer starting... a young mortal." A rumor of a smile, anticipating.

"For christsake Janette, when are you going to stop hiring with your hormones?"

"That's why I have you, cherie. Go now, Nicolas is waiting. You have put him through enough, I think, for one night." And Maura nodded. Janette really did love him, didn't she? What kind of bond is forged in 800 years, she wondered.

When she caught up with Nick he was throwing her two bags into the cavernous trunk of the Caddy. They didn't speak on the drive back to the loft, but Maura could feel Nick's fingers toying lightly with her hair where his hand rested on the back of her seat. When they got in she dragged upstairs, exhausted from high emotions and no sleep to speak of. True to his word and over her protests that it wasn't necessary, Nick left her to herself in the bedroom and, after changing into the customary t shirt and sweatpants, went downstairs to sleep on the sofa. But not before hugging her one last time.

"I'd miss you terribly, you know. Surprising what you get used to so quickly." She returned the embrace wearily and crawled into bed as he shut the door part way behind him.

Some hours later Maura woke suddenly, and with a voracious thirst. Creeping quietly down the stairs, she was drawn to guttural sounds from the living room. Nick, in his deep slumber on the sofa, gnashed and twisted in the throes of a nightmare.

The dreams had returned, triggered by his attraction and need. The city was populated by his past, by eight hundred years of those he had betrayed, seduced, destroyed. Every woman whose love was turned upon her with brutal laughter, every man whose confidence was flung in his face with a surge of pleasure only the power of cruelty could have given him. Lying in alleys, fallen by roadsides, left to rot carelessly on beaches and in barns. They all were there, disguised as those people he passed by every day in his work and life. They stared sorrowfully, accusingly, bearing their scars and open wounds as if they'd been inflicted moments ago instead of over the centuries. And suddenly as one they laughed at him, as he had at them, laughed at his need to change that compelled him to do all he could to save those he once would have killed. They laughed because they knew that no penance was sufficient. And they laughed because they knew that this time would be no different, that he would use this woman as he had the others. After a hundred years without killing, this would shatter the balance they knew he really didn't want.

Maura approached the sofa where Nick struggled with some inner visions she couldn't imagine. She dropped to her knees next to him, uncertain how to wake him. He slept so deeply in this state, she didn't know if she could.

"Nick," she whispered, then louder, "Nick." She laid a hand on his chest, the other touching his face. As if some inner circuit had been closed he sprang up and grabbed her brutally by the shoulders, eyes afire, fangs exposed, face twisted in a fierce snarl. He held her so powerfully she couldn't even shrink back, but called to him, "Nick! It's me, it's Maura, Nick it's okay now, you're okay!"

His eyes darkened immediately, face numb with shock. He just stared for a moment, then seized her in such a tight embrace she could hardly breathe, as if he were protecting her from someone other than himself. She wrapped her arms around him, holding his head to her shoulder, pressing her face in his hair, "Nick, it's okay, just a dream, it's okay. Can you tell me?" He was shaking his head, shuddering like a child frightened in the night. His face was pressed into her neck and the pulse he felt there didn't tempt him, it seemed to offer some distant comfort. Warmth, softness, he'd had these things before but this time they existed in someone who was unafraid and couldn't be fooled. Safe, she was safe with him because of who she was and not what he wanted. Maybe that was the only way it would work. Suddenly Maura became for him everyone in the dream, every deceived brutalized and betrayed mortal, every kindness repaid with pain and death. "I'm sorry," he muttered, then she felt something wet on her skin and realized it wasn't her blood but his tears, "I'm sorry I hurt you, I lied to you, I used, you," and Maura was confused at first and thought he was talking about the past few days.

"No, Nick, no, you didn't hurt me, you didn't lie to me, you aren't using me, don't," the intensity of his desperation alarmed her. He was so sure of himself and so secure even in his sadness at times, this wasn't anger or vampire passion or bitter rage. It was grief, and a remorse that usually was played out through this incarnation he had engineered to make up for the past. It seemed that that the guilt he carried every day was rushing out, released by a bad dream. She climbed onto the sofa, still locked in his arms and holding him tightly as she could, "Nick, it's okay, it's all right, you're nobody you shouldn't be, not anymore." But nothing seemed to soothe him as he'd been able to soothe her, and she knew his torment was so much older and deeper than hers that maybe nothing would reach it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated like a mantra until she understood it wasn't her, it was everyone. Centuries of the evil he'd done, put on a shelf but never redeemed even by his best intentions. Maura knew she'd triggered this storm somehow. He was afraid of going back, he wanted her here but was afraid what he'd discovered would revive what he'd been. She managed to pull his head from her, to take his face in her hands and force him to look in her eyes. Deeper than she'd ever seen, there was light flickering, but it wasn't the blood fire this time, it was another sort of struggle. "Nicolas, listen to me, listen, you won't go back. I won't let you. You know what I am, you know you can't control me, I'm here of my own will and I won't let you go back, okay? If it's me, I'll leave first, I promise. You're safe, I'll help keep you safe. I'm not afraid of you. You can't hurt me and I won't let you hurt yourself."

"I'm sorry," he whispered again and she said the only words she knew might reach him even if they didn't make sense to her. "I forgive you, are you listening Nicolas de Brabant? I _forgive _you, for all of us, for all of them, you aren't who you were. Oh, please, Nick, _listen_ to me!" She even shook him a little, gripping with her hands in his hair. And, suddenly, he was still. His hold on her softened, some of the torment left his expression. He looked as if just now he recognized her, as if he were coming out of hypnosis. He took a deep breath, released it slowly.

"I'm," he began. "Don't say it, okay? Don't. Just tell me you're okay."

Nick nodded a little sheepishly. "Yeah, I think so." He ran a hand through her messed-up hair. "Thanks for not running away."

Maura shook her head a little and smiled. "Not with a grip like yours, man. I couldn't have _blasted_ away." She rested her forehead against his and sighed with relief. "We gotta do something about these mood swings, you know?" She meant both of them. He laughed shakily and let her go, sitting back against the arm of the sofa.

"I don't know if there's a psychiatrist qualified to deal with our 'issues', Maura."

"I think we both need some sleep. I don't know about you but I don't think I've hit REM in the past day or so." She frowned a bit as she pulled back and stood up. "You don't have to stay down here anymore. New moon is past by now, look," and she opened the blinds to reveal the barest sliver of silver crescent low in the sky. "I'm safe now. For both of us." He reached a cool hand to touch hers and brought it near his face.

"But you still smell sweet." He kissed her fingers lightly. "I'll be up in a minute."

Maura was nearly out, but she felt something shift in the bed. He was there, as promised. He must have drunk quite a bit because he was throwing off considerable heat. He slid right over to her, reached his arm across to pull her around to face him. "Let me keep the bad dreams away for you."

"I won't have any more bad dreams, Nick. I really don't think I will. I'm not going to fight anymore, or make excuses for whatever is happening here. I think if I manage not to fuck it up I might just have something resembling a life before too long. Or as close as it's gonna get. And if you can be as brave as I can try to be, maybe you won't have to hold your hand in the sunlight to feel alive."

"But I'm not alive, not really." Honesty, always.

"Yes you are. I don't sleep with dead guys. That would be sick." She made him smile, which felt much better. "I'm so tired, Nick, I don't wanna be all weird anymore. I just wanna get on with things, you know?" She yawned.

"Yeah, I know. C'mere," he pulled her into his arms. "Just this once, let me keep you warm instead of the other way around. Okay?"

She settled against him. He wasn't just warm, he was burning up. "Yeah, okay." Where no heartbeat was she felt instead a stillness not of death but of peace. She asked idly, for no reason, "If you can absorb so much of a mortal by feeding on them, what do you get from that stuff in the bottles?" Though she figured there must be a difference between a live feed and a "preserved" one. There was silence for a moment, then a low "Moooo," in her ear, followed by a laugh and a kiss.

"I sometimes get the urge to lie down when it's going to rain," he told her seriously.

"Sorry I asked."

"I'm not. I love your questions, that you're not ever afraid to ask anything at all. I like having a reason to make stupid jokes. I've always been so serious, so elegant, so taking it all so gravely. I took me 800 years to realize that life doesn't have to be one long film noir."

"Mm, good, I'm glad." She felt drugged by his heat, and still fairly stunned by the absence of fear. She felt a quiet chuckle from within him.

"Sleep, Sweet, I'll shut up now."

That night she didn't pull away from him even when the chill returned. Her warmth was enough for both of them, just this once.


	4. Chapter 4

"Natalie, this is stupid. I _miss_ you, and you can't make me believe you don't feel the same way. We've been friends for a long time, Maura's presence shouldn't change that."

"It's not her _presence_ that bothers me, Nick."

He had come to the lab to force her to talk. It had been two weeks now, two weeks of silence or else curt communication, excruciatingly professional, when work brought them together. Everything about his life had suddenly come to feel so natural to him that this made no sense at all. He wasn't naive enough to be unaware she was jealous, but knew it was more complicated. Natalie did believe Maura was a catalyst for him to backslide, to be content with his life as a vampire and to stop fighting against it. Maybe she was right, he no longer felt the panicky need to become mortal, no longer saw his existence as a prison. He had begun to consider that perhaps his obsession with penance as just that, an obsession that kept him from seeing and doing the good that was within his reach. Maura welcomed him, needed him and understood him just as he was. He didn't frighten or disappoint her, he wasn't a "could be" or a "used to be", in her eyes he was an "is". "Ain't nothing but is, Just Nick," she'd told him one night when he was caught in musing about some past perceived failure, and about how things might have been different if only, if only. He wanted to be patient with Natalie, to let her come around of her own accord, but he was beginning to fear that neglecting the situation might make it permanent and that was good for nobody.

"I'm sorry if I haven't been able to be the kind of man you think you want me to be, Nat. It's not as if I haven't tried."

"But you're giving _up_." She ignored his double meaning. It wasn't like him to be coy, but he had always been careful about not forcing her hand. So she wouldn't get angry, so he wouldn't have to face her logic. So he wouldn't have to hurt her in the final way they'd been postponing. And the truth was she would have given anything to be in Maura's favored position. Not her condition, of course, but the easy link she'd made with Nick, the connection that happened almost by default. There was a mutual understanding that Natalie knew Nick would never share with her. She'd always wanted him to be like her, always felt that was the only way to cure him of his melancholy need for distance. Well now it appeared she had been wrong about that too, because that need for distance had evaporated in a heartbeat when Maura appeared in his life. He wasn't afraid of her, of hurting or disappointing her. His only fear seemed to be that she might leave.

Nick sighed. "You're confusing giving up with acceptance. Not settling, not surrender. Acceptance that maybe who I am and what I do is all good enough the way it is, that I can find a way to make it even better without having to get down to the molecular level. I don't quite believe it yet, but suddenly there is a possibility I might. I don't think that's such a bad thing." He reached out for Natalie's hand, and in spite of herself she grabbed on, but couldn't look him in the eye as she asked,

"Do you think you love her? In a way you couldn't love anyone else?" Like me, for instance.

"I don't think we have the vocabulary yet for what this is. I just know I'm the closest to being at peace that I've been for 800 years."

"Maybe it's her magic blood, have you thought of that?"

He squeezed her hand. "I don't think you believe that. Drugs make you feel drugged, not secure."

The deepest part of the conversation went, as always, unspoken. Why not me, Natalie thought, why aren't I good enough? It's not you, Nick thought, it's not about shortcomings or what you might have done differently. It ain't nothing but is. He hugged her tight, and she hugged back fiercely.

"I'm sorry Nick, I know I should be glad you're finding a way to stop hating yourself. I just wish,"

"Ssh," he stepped back and let her go. Not a warning, but an acknowledgment that the words weren't necessary. "You need to know that Maura is disturbed by the notion of hurting our friendship. Personal connection is important to her, Nat, because she's never really had it. The last thing she wants to do is ruin it between anyone else." He looked so eager to convince her, so needing her to understand, that she couldn't keep the cool attitude any longer.

"Okay, Nick. I'm sorry, I know I've made it harder on you than I should have. Maybe you're right, maybe I'm reading this all wrong. Maybe there's more than a little bit of ego involved here." She shook her head as if to clear it. "Maybe I'd rather not go into that right now." She took a breath, sorting things out. "So, if you think maybe you're okay where you are, maybe we can look a little deeper into where Maura is, maybe there's a way to help her that doesn't involve hiding out."

His smile was genuinely affectionate. "That would be great, though I'm not sure where you'd start."

"Maybe on the 'molecular level'," she teased, then patted his arm. "I'll check some things out in her blood sample and let you know if I need to see her again."

"You could call her yourself, you know. She's not the one who bites."

"Ha, ha. Now if we're through making up, I have work to do."

He lingered a little awkwardly. "There is another thing I could use some help with..."

"What's that?"

"Well, it's about body temperature. I'm wondering if there's some way I could boost it," he trailed off.

"You mean without feeding."

"Yeah, you know that as it is I only warm up when I've had something to er, drink."

Natalie considered this as she sat on her lab stool. "But I thought you never had trouble with that, you're always pretty comfortable wherever you are." She knew his winter clothes and fur-lined gloves were only affectations to avoid questions. When he didn't elaborate, she understood. It was for Maura, not him. Of course, who wanted to get close to someone with the body temperature of a corpse? She really needed to stop being taken by surprise by any of this. It was obvious, _had been_ obvious, how closely joined Nick had become to Maura in just a few weeks. Whether or not they had made love in the mortal sense, there was certainly a physical connection. She'd been naive to think that Nick had been sleeping on the sofa. She kept all of this to herself, merely suggesting, "So maybe we can look into finding a way to mimic the chemical reaction that happens when you feed, so you can have it on demand so to speak."

"Or find a way to have it occur all the time, like mortals do."

"But you're not mortal, Nick. You're asking for a global change in physiology that probably isn't possible."

His smile was narrow, and a little smug. "But that's what you've always proposed, isn't it? A global change to make me mortal. Well maybe we can work on just this one thing."

"Not for you, though."

"Nat, please. Don't start this again."

They stared one another down for a moment, and Natalie sighed in acceptance. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. But tell me something so maybe I don't feel like such a possessive bitch, does Maura have any problem with _our_ friendship? The fact we've been close for a while and that I maybe can help you out of this?"

Nick looked almost apologetic. "Not a bit. In fact she has been nagging me to come here, told me it wasn't fair for me to expect you to make the first move when the trouble started on my side."

Natalie shook her head. "I do wish it was easier to hate her. But you're right, I'm applying mortal rules to something there's not even a definition for." He was beginning to look hopeful, which was interfering with her need to be self-righteous.

"She isn't threatened by our very real, very deep relationship," Nick told her, stepping closer to look in her eyes. "So why should you be threatened by hers and mine? Neither is more important than the other, or better, or more substantial. They're just different."

On a logical level Natalie knew he was right. Nothing that happened between Nick and Maura could possibly change what was between Nick and herself. As for her emotions, she would have to work on them. Both knew she wished she were in Maura's place in Nick's life, but they also knew what they had was important enough to hang onto.

"Okay, Nick," she told him finally, hoping not to let the trace of sadness show through. "More than anything I want you to be happy, to have the best kind of life you can. And if Maura helps make it that, how could I be selfish enough not to want it?" He hugged her tightly.

"Thank you, Nat, I was so afraid I'd lost you, lost us."

So there was her answer. Between the two of them, he would have lost her rather than Maura. Not that the power to choose belonged to any of them.

Before long Maura was accepted, albeit with a bit of puzzlement, as Nick's live-in girlfriend. Though Schanke and Stonetree found the rapidity of his transformation unusual, they and others who knew him had to admit that Nick Knight's permanent state of philosophical melancholy had been replaced by a lighter mood. Not gregarious or wildly upbeat, but more seemingly at ease with himself. And if it happened in just a few weeks, who were they to question it? Only Natalie knew the truth, which was perhaps not much different than the general understanding.

The annual department awards dinner was coming up. Schanke and Nick were to receive an above-and-beyond type of award for their work on breaking the case of a serial rapist/killer. Such things made Nick supremely uncomfortable, hating as he did, for obvious reasons, to be the center of too much attention. Even since his friend doctored the computer personnel records, his air of mystery remained among his colleagues and any more details they could glean from him were eagerly consumed. Now that the seemingly permanent single was known to have a love life, the curiosity increased exponentially.

"So Nick, you bringing the reluctant Maura to the dinner on Saturday?" Capt. Stonetree wanted to know.

"Afraid not, Captain, she has to work. Filling in for the doorkeeper at Raven. " He left out the part where the doorkeeper had flown – sans plane – to the French Alps to sample the rich young skiers. "Besides, she's not much of a party animal."

Schanke appeared from nowhere and shook Nick by the shoulder. "Come _on_, man, even Myra is coming! You can't get a special commendation without the little woman there to cheer you on!" As the only one beside Natalie who had met Maura, Schanke fancied himself an insider. Nick cringed a bit at "the little woman", knowing exactly how Maura would respond to such a description.

"Well if you promise to call her that to her face, I might give it a shot," Nick suggested drily. "Though I'd suggest you wear your Kevlar tux." To be honest, he hadn't even told Maura about the award, not wanting her to feel compelled to attend. Who was he kidding? She hated big parties so much it wouldn't matter if he were to be anointed king and sainted simultaneously. She'd smile, say "Cool, Just Nick," and curl up on the sofa to read for the evening after duly advising him on attire. Not that it had ever come up, but he knew how it would play anyway. And of course there was the certainty that they would be scrutinized all evening, every word and look and interaction with each other and anyone else. On display they'd be, all night, and the subject of avid discussion for days (weeks?) thereafter. He didn't even want to go himself.

Stonetree persisted, "Well just ask her, will you, you she might surprise you. And frankly I'd like to meet the woman that has chased some of the noir from your attitude, detective. I imagine she must be something."

Nick smiled, involuntarily. "She is that. Okay, I'll ask her. But no promises. And if she does say yes, _Schanke_," he turned on his partner, "try to leave your spotlight at home, huh?" Schanke raised both hands in conciliation.

"Understood, partner. I won't even _speak_ to her."

"Right. No promises." Nick was beginning to realize that if he showed up alone _that_ speculation would be wilder than any encouraged by Maura's attendance.

"No. No-no-no-no." Maura barely looked up from the cash shuffling rapidly through her fingers. She was counting money at the bar after closing, double checking before she cashed it out. For some foolish reason Nick figured she'd be less likely to laugh in his face at work. Wrong.

"Schanke promised he'd behave," he added lamely.

"Fuck Schanke. He couldn't behave if he was unconscious." She didn't dislike him exactly, he just got on her last nerve like a sugared-up six year old. She'd banded the bills and was heading for the office but Nick cut her off and planted himself in front of her.

"Look, this is the lesser of several evils. I can't _not_ go and accept the award with Schanke. If I go alone, it's all I'll hear about all night and the following week, where's the 'mystery woman', why didn't she come, blah, blah, blah."

Maura listened in silence, regarding him with a cool stare. "So far all I'm hearing is _your _problem."

Nick threw up his hands in exasperation. "Oh, well, excuse me then. We'll just forget about how all the attention I'd almost succeeded in calming down has focused like a laser since your arrival."

"Don't go there," she warned, trying to step around him, but he kept step with her, leaning in to make his point.

"We're already there, or hadn't you noticed. Come on, Maura, we'll just make our appearance and beg an early evening, okay? You can get a headache or something."

"Why do _I_ have to get a headache?" she demanded. This time she succeeded in dodging around Nick but he followed close by her ear.

"Just one night, and we can shut them up for awhile."

She stopped short and he walked into her. "I suppose I could be such a bitch that nobody would ever _want_ to see me again..."

"Wouldn't _that_ be a stretch," Nick muttered, though not low enough for her to miss. She whirled on him in outrage.

"You are _so_ evil!" she hissed. Before he could say it, she did too, and it came out in unison, "Centuries of practice," and they both started laughing.

"Oh, all right," Maura relented, "but only if you dance with me."

Nick hedged, remembering their last dance at Raven and not wanting to even come close to repeating that performance. "Well, I'm not sure if they're going to have dancing."

"Deal's _off_," she declared and marched to the office door, where Janette was just coming out to see where she was with the night's door take.

"Oh all right, I'll dance your feet off, okay?" Nick was saying as the door opened.

"Dancing again? Why Nicolas, you've rediscovered your past," Janette drawled.

"Nick's invited me to the prom," Maura volunteered, and enjoyed the shock on her employer's face.

"The department awards dinner," Nick corrected. "If we show up together it might dampen some of the gossip."

Janette raised an eyebrow and smiled wickedly, "Or raise some more, if you're not careful. When is this... fête?"

"Week from Saturday. She can have the night off. Have one of your mascots do the door."

Janette readily agreed, noting, "It's full moon that night. You should be quite safe to be seen in public."

But on the ride home that night Maura began to have second thoughts. She hated being on display, and there was no doubt that the whole point was for everyone to see her, more to the point to see her with Nick.

"I dunno," she said, "I hate being watched. I've been watched all my _life. _I'm so sick of it."

"Well at least this time they'll just be watching, not _stalking_."

She sighed as he pulled up outside the loft entrance. "Yeah, okay. You're right, the way to keep people from peeking in the windows is to stand outside. Or something."

Nick arrived at Raven to pick Maura up on the way to the dinner. It was all a bit mysterious, but he gathered that Janette had enlisted her personal dressmaker to create something for Maura. Janette was behaving much out of her usual character, demonstrating an enthusiasm for the event as a sort of "coming out party" for Maura. The two had developed a guarded fondness for one another, not the least because of their cynical world views and weary instincts for survival.

"Now is your chance to engage mortals on their own home ground," Janette told Maura at her final dress fitting. Maura had let Janette have her way with the design, a modified gothic look in emerald green silk velvet with a black brocade-embroidered front panel of burgundy silk. It featured a fitted bodice with deep décolletage, the skirt falling on the bias from the hips. The sleeves were long and loose, fitted at the wrist with a long cuff fastened by three buttons of ruby crystal. Maura had objected to the length of the skirt, which Janette had originally intended should sweep the floor.

"For christsake, Janette, it's an awards dinner not the grand ball of the Duke of Mantua! Isn't it enough that it has a neckline designed for a harlot?" To be honest she loved the dress, even if it made her feel a little vamp-chic. Or perhaps because of it. It was agreed finally that the skirt would hang to cocktail length.

"I _am_ a mortal," she now reminded Janette. "And engage them in what? It's a party, not a battle of wits."

Janette looked put out. "Now cherie, you mustn't spoil this for me. I haven't had the chance to dress a lady for presentation, since, since," she pondered for a moment.

"Since the last days of the Folies Bergère?" Maura prompted absently, tugging at the bottom of the neckline that certainly revealed enough cleavage for a can-can dancer.

"Well if you like I certainly wouldn't care if you bought one of those dreadful commercial creations _off the rack_." In Janette's mouth those three words sounded exactly like "from the dumpster".

Maura whirled as Yvonne, Janette's dressmaker, removed the last of the basting tape from the rolled hem. "Now Janette, I love it. Just ornate enough, without being vulgar." Janette disappeared for a moment into the private room off of her office, reappearing with a black velvet box in hand. "I think this will look splendid, you must wear it," she insisted as she opened the box to display the contents. Inside was a large full red rose, carved entirely from garnet and set on an ornate silver chain with a small gold clasp set with more garnets. Too stunned to respond, Maura stood motionless as Janette put the necklace on her and swept her hair aside to fasten the clasp. She steered Maura to the mirror, then stood back to admire the effect as she asked, "You have done a wondrous job, Yvonne. What do you think of our 'muscle' now?" More than once she had suggested to Maura that she perhaps might dress a little more elegantly. Not that she looked like a vagabond, of course, but no harm in indulging in a little elegance now and then even in a bar. Janette of course was always a vision of fashion.

Yvonne, a petite blonde mortal, enthused "Why madame, she will turn heads to be sure."

Maura stared at herself in the mirror. God, she looked so strange to herself. The pendant hung at exactly the right level midway between her throat and breasts. Maura could swear she could feel it radiating warmth.

"Janette, there isn't anything I should _know_ about this little bauble, is there?" she asked suspiciously. "It's not some sort of cursed gift from Elisabeth Bathory or Bloody Mary or anyone like that, is it?"

"Certainly not. It was given to me by Lord Byron," she managed to deliver this with a look that was simultaneously innocent and sly, "and since both you and Nicolas are already 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know', what harm?"

Maura laughed and shook her head. "Fine." She turned to face Janette and Yvonne, and swept an elegant curtsy. "Mesdemoiselles, I thank you. I only hope I don't make Nick look like a derelict by comparison."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, cherie."

As Maura agreed with Janette that it would be fun to surprise Nick with her outfit, he was told that he should pick Maura up at Club Raven at 6:30pm on the appointed evening. She got dressed with little ceremony, choosing to wear her hair down over Janette's protests.

"Cherie, such a dress was made for an upsweep of silken hair," she argued, twisting the hair in question into an ornate knot behind Maura's head. "Look at what it does to display your throat."

Maura stepped away. "Enough with the throat, Vampira." She brushed out her hair and shook her head vigorously, letting it fall in rich loose waves about her shoulders. "I'm not going to the opera, after all."

"Am I permitted to see my 'date' now, or do I have to drive downtown blindfolded?" came a voice from out in the bar. Nick.

"Nah, get an eyeful now and get over it," announced Maura, pulling open the door without ceremony and striding boldly through, hair and skirt flying. "Wow," she murmured. Nick looked positively edible in black wool trousers, deep sapphire-blue silk blazer, and silver-grey silk shirt with a black tab tie anchored by a sparkling diamond tack. His mouth was opened to speak, but frozen now in a half-smile as he took in Maura's appearance.

"Likewise. You look," he began, nodding in approval to Janette and Yvonne who stood behind her, "she looks, well," he trailed off, then blurted out, "Hey, isn't that the necklace that you stole from Lady Caroline Lamb?" Maura exploded in laughter.

"So Byron 'gave' it to you, huh?" she challenged, turning to confront Janette.

She was unembarrassed. "He _would _have, cherie, but he never displayed very astute judgment when enjoying his opium."

Nick spoke up. "Well since we are agreed that we look better than anything abroad in Toronto this evening, let's go on to the dinner and shut up all the gossips, shall we?" He extended his arm like a true gentleman. Maura accepted the black velvet swing coat offered by Janette, grabbed the green velvet purse that held only lipstick and two ten-dollar bills ("Cab fare, cherie" Janette explained, "in case Nicolas behaves like a brute") and took Nick's arm as if she were stepping out with the Prince of Wales. She was a lot more nervous than she would admit. She never liked being the center of attention, it was one of the things that she and Nick shared wholeheartedly in common, but the prospect of a night out with new people was beginning to feel appealing.

They entered the conference center about twenty minutes into the cocktail hour. Nick had already prepared his colleagues for the fact that he would not be dining, only joining them at the table. The facts of his "macrobiotic diet" were firmly established and no longer questioned in general. Some preferred to think his not eating in public was a neurosis equivalent to being unable to pee when anyone else was around. Whatever worked, he always said. Maura hung back at the doorway for half a heartbeat. "Deep breath," she muttered.

Nick straightened his arm and let her hand drop into his. "Come on, chicken, let's turn some heads." Yvonne's comment had obviously gotten back to him.

And turn heads they did. Everyone nearby tried desperately to look casual as they checked out Nick's "girlfriend". Maura was almost relieved to see Schanke approach them in a rush, accompanied by a striking blonde draped in sequined black crepe. "Nick! Maura! You sure clean up nice!" The blonde at his side extended her hand to Maura first, offering her cheek to Nick. "Myra you look breathtaking," Nick complimented. "Allow me to introduce Maura Logue. Maura, this is Myra Schanke."

The contrast between this stylish woman and her gregarious husband was a stunner. Maura took her hand, saying "Myra, I'm so glad to meet you. You must be very proud of the work your husband has done." Myra smiled glowingly at said husband. "He is someone to be proud of," she declared. "And Nick too, they earned this together for the work they did. You know, even Robin Moran is here tonight." Robin Moran was the only surviving victim of the serial rapist Nick and Schanke had collared; they had apprehended him as he was beating her nearly to death. Both Nick and Schanke had worked prodigious overtime on that case, both personally offended and horrified by what had been done to the victims, both equally driven to prevent more. She squeezed Nick's hand. "There _is_ a certain cachet in hanging with the good guys." At that moment a tall, beefy man obviously uncomfortable in his buttoned-up suit approached them, beaming.

"Captain!" Schanke exclaimed. "Here's the mystery woman that improved Nick's mood... sometimes," he indicated Maura.

"Joe Stonetree," the beefy man grinned and shook her hand vigorously. "I was beginning to think you were one of Schanke's caffeine-induced hallucinations." Myra Schanke laughed heartily at this.

"Maura Logue," she offered. "And I'm afraid I'm something of an hallucination to everyone. Too much work, and after dealing with long nights of Toronto's party people I usually like to play hermit in my off time."

"Sounds like you two are well matched," Stonetree observed.

"Maybe I should just leave the 'mystery woman' alone with her adoring public and go on home," Nick suggested in feigned insult.

"Don't you _dare_," Maura warned, wrapping her free hand around his arm. "You know how I am with strangers."

He smiled indulgently. "Yeah, you charm them out of their shoes." She smirked in reply and their eyes locked.

"Yep, partner," Schanke observed, " I'd say you've met your match." Nick freed his arm from Maura to reach around her in an affectionate hug.

"That remains to be seen, I'd say. The night is young."

"Good thing something is," Maura muttered out of the side of her mouth. From the corner of her eye she spied Natalie, dressed to kill and sharing a drink with her lab mates, studiously avoiding looking her way.

Dinner conversation was light and friendly, and none of the questions were very intrusive. They were all, naturally, directed toward Maura. How did she come to Toronto, how did she and Nick meet, did she like it here, etc. She was able to answer truthfully without much effort.

"I came here from Vancouver, and there from Boston. I'd lost my job out west, and figured I needed a change so why not head back East? I'm from Boston originally. I stopped here when I ran out of money, to be honest, and needed to find a job fast that didn't demand an upscale wardrobe or complex references! Luckily when I got to Raven my timing was perfect, Janette was desperate for a security manager. I'd done plenty of that over the years, so she hired me on spec and there I am."

"But what do you do when you're not managing bouncers?" Myra wanted to know. It was a reasonable enough question, but one Maura couldn't answer clearly.

"This and that. Whatever the job requires. I've been a bookkeeper, a crisis counselor, a hotel desk manager. I've done lots and lots of temp work, which is a great way to gather broad experience." And a great way to come and go quickly, she added silently.

"Think maybe you might settle down here?" Captain Stonetree asked pointedly. This was, of course, her cue to beam lovingly at Nick and probably squeeze his hand. Her dinner companions were disappointed by her shrug. "It could happen. I like it fine so far." She did tip a brief smile to Nick, but they didn't dwell on it. A puzzled silence followed, broken by the voice of the police commissioner announcing the beginning of the awards program.

Nick joked to break the awkwardness. "I've learned not to ask too many questions. She'll fill me in on a need-to-know basis."

Someone was tapping on the microphone on the small dais at the front of the dining room. It was the police commissioner, whose name Maura had already forgotten after Nick told her just few minutes before. So many people to talk to, and to her surprise and relief she was beginning to relax and enjoy behaving like a "regular" person. The attention didn't seem as scary now as Nick's colleagues obviously respected her privacy. He must have coached them a little. In fact, he'd coached them a lot.

"Schanke," he'd told his partner the day before, "I am counting on you to help prevent an inquisition. Maura isn't comfortable at the center of attention, and as you've pointed out one of the things we share in common is a taste for privacy. Do you think you can sort of spread it around, and ensure a pleasant evening for everyone?"

For all of his smartass displays, Don Schanke wasn't exactly a savage. "Sure, partner. We'll keep the dissecting table safely locked in Dr. Lambert's lab."

But now it was time for Nick and Don (Maura had begun to refer to him by his first name, encouraged by his uncharacteristically subdued behavior. He'd even seemed to deflect some questions she deemed a little to personal) to stand humbly by while the Commissioner and their Captain introduced them in glowing terms. Tenacious, driven by personal honor, taking a personal interest in the case and the victims, they spent endless hours and much of their own time to crack the case and prevent more women from being victimized. Robin Moran followed the commissioner and Captain Stonetree, offering an emotional account of her rescue and a heartfelt expression of gratitude to both before retaking her seat to warm applause. The applause grew more enthusiastic as Don, in an unusual display of humility, shoved Nick to the microphone, who thanked those present for their recognition while simultaneously deflecting it. Then Don stepped up and added "Well I don't mind if you give it up for me, guys, it doesn't happen that often," and the place went wild with cheers and catcalls as the pair returned to their table.

"Well you were as good as your word, it was brief," Maura was telling the Captain.

"Didn't want to embarrass the recipients," he explained as Schanke protested he wasn't embarrassed at all. Myra patted his arm and assured him, "That's okay darling, I'll be embarrassed for both of us." Maura got the feeling that Schanke's expression, a mixture of defeat and uncertainty, was not an unaccustomed one. In the next room, a band was warming up. Maura rose at once and hauled Nick to his feet.

"We're gonna _dance_, dude, you _promised_." Nick rolled his eyes and regarded his friends with mock weariness.

"Time to pay for the plaque, partner," Schanke smirked, but Myra was dragging him out of his seat as well. "Aw, honey, you know I hate to dance!"

"Well you hate to chase people down dark alleys too, and you just got an award for it. Be a big brave detective, Donnie, and set a good example for your partner."

"Why start now?" Nick jabbed, and they joined others on the trek to the dance floor. Maura was pleasantly surprised to recognize Vamp, the band that often rocked the crowd at Raven, and waved to the guys. They demonstrated their approval of her appearance with whistles and hand waves. Vamp was the dark metal Goth crew when playing at the club, but playing out in other clubs and functions they ran the gamut of rock and blues. Nick made good on his promise, and they danced every song until long after the Schankes had to stop for a breather.

"Don't look now," Nick said in her ear as he gyrated them to a funky blues number, "but I think someone's having a good time."

She dropped her head back and laughed, feeling him stumble just a little. It worked that way every time and she had to admit she got a cheap thrill cracking he famous Knight cool in public, if only for a heartbeat. Just then the band downshifted from funk to the Allman Brothers' "Sweet Melissa". Nick began to lead Maura off the floor, but she hung back.

"Come on, Just Nick, let's give 'em something to talk about," she invited. Without a second of hesitation he pivoted and took her in his arms. "Works for me," and he smiled that warm/admiring/indulgent smile that she'd come to love as much as his quiet voice. She kissed him then, unable to resist, and he returned it and followed with his own warm laughter as he spun them in place and continued the dance. And he really did dance with her, they weren't just standing in place groping each other and shuffling their feet. Nick moved with a dancer's purpose and grace, and Maura matched every move as if his brain controlled her body. She'd never been very good at following but with Nick it felt more like perfect tandem. He slowed them now, narrowing their motion but still drawing intricate patterns that wove them among the others around them, holding her with his arm secure around her waist, hand spread on her back, her fingers wrapped around his thumb on the other hand that surrounded hers. She stared into his eyes until seeing her reflection made her dizzy, then laid her head on his shoulder just as she saw Natalie approach as if to pleasantly cut in. Seeing Maura's head drop, she changed course and returned to her friends at the side of the room as if that was what she'd planned all along. Wishing she could feel more remorse, Maura pressed her face into the smooth silk of Nick's jacket.

"Oh, I think I'm headed for trouble, Just Nick," she told him hazily. She was more relaxed than she could remember being in such a long time.

"Why is that?" His voice was close in her ear.

"I don't think I should go into it now."

Lips moving in her hair. "Don't worry, Sweet. You can tell me anything, whenever you're ready."

She raised her head to face him. "That's part of the trouble," she confided. She felt drunk, even though she had barely had a sip of champagne. That smile again.

"No trouble, I promise," and he kissed her, lingering, not caring who saw, before he guided her back to where Don and Myra stood talking with Natalie and Grace. She liked how his hand felt in the small of her back.


	5. Chapter 5

Maura, Natalie and I were just admiring that beautiful dress. Wherever did you find it?"

She was grateful for a reason to shift her focus from Nick. "Oh, this old thing?" she cracked, lifting and sweeping the skirt around like a five-year-old. "Janette had her dressmaker sew it for me. Janette designed it. I suppose I'm lucky I intervened when I did, or I'd be tripping over the skirt and falling out of the neckline!"

"What a stunning necklace," Natalie was clearly mesmerized by the garnet rose.

"It's not mine, but I _wish _it were! Janette insisted I borrow it. It's carved from solid garnet, she got it from," and there she managed to stop herself. It had all sounded so matter of fact when Janette had told her, and she had a hard time thinking of it otherwise. Her near-slip gave Nick a turn; she felt his thumb press hard into her back. Shifting away she finished, "She got it from a friend in England. A poet, I think."

Natalie appeared relieved to hear it wasn't a gift from Nick. Or maybe that was just Maura's imagination.

"I forgot to congratulate you, Detective Above and Beyond," Natalie exclaimed, embracing Nick and kissing his cheek. "But I know you hate this kind of thing," she gestured around the room.

"It's not so bad," he responded a little vaguely, "I'm enjoying myself actually." He was, in fact. And he knew it wasn't just because Maura was there, as she knew as well, but she was responsible for giving him an "excuse".

"To be honest," Maura told Grace and Natalie, "_he _had a hard time convincing _me_ to come. I'm not much for big parties and meeting bunches of new people."

"Well, we're not all new," Natalie assured her, and Maura detected genuine warmth in her voice. "Grace, this is Maura Logue. She's pretty new to Toronto. She's been living with Nick for a couple of months."

Grace smiled widely and shook Maura's hand and teased Nick, "Well, well, so much for the department's most eligible bachelor."

Maura fidgeted a little. "Well I didn't _marry_ him or anything."

"So, did you and Nick know each other before?" A natural enough question since Natalie had just said she was new in town. Nick rescued Maura, who was struggling to find a plausible answer.

"Maura works at Raven for my old friend Janette." Grace knew who Janette was and that she and Nick went "way back".

"And Janette played matchmaker?"

"Pretty much," Nick agreed and changed the subject to a current case. Bored by the shop talk, Maura wandered off after telling them, "Be proud of me, I'm gonna mingle."

She didn't get very far, daunted by the prospect of conjuring a conversation from thin air. She'd never been very good at that, and it wasn't because of the wariness that had been sharpened over the years. She was just not able to start from zero with a stranger. She wound up drifting over to Schanke, whose wife was dancing with the obviously single Captain Stonetree.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"Nah. Myra's found another dance partner, thank god." But his expression was full of affection. It was a new face Maura was seeing, no longer the smartass poser.

"Myra seems quite a woman," she observed.

"Sometimes I wonder how she wound up with me," he confessed, apparently without meaning to. Maura ignored the comment and he shook it off, shifting the focus as Nick had moments earlier. "So is it as _scary_ as you expected?"

She shook her head with a smile. "Nope. You're all very nice. I'm just well, out of practice being sociable."

Schanke regarded her with a knowing expression. "Yeah, well, you two have plenty in common right there. Nick's a regular hermit. Some people at work think he's a snob, but I don't think it's that. It's like he's, not shy exactly, but not sure how to act. Like his life's easier to manage if he keeps it to himself."

"You're very astute, detective." She was stunned by his accurate assessment. The demeanor she'd seen before tonight had seemed self-centered, and prone to false conclusions. It never occurred to her that he, too, might not be what he seemed. Which gave all three of them plenty in common.

"Don. Call me Don. Look I know I everyone thinks I'm loud and tacky, but Nick is the guy who watches my back at work, like I watch his, and you watch his back at home like Myra watches mine. So I figure that kind of makes us _all_ partners, not to get _too_ deep and meaningful," he rolled his eyes in familiar fashion.

"I get it, Don. I guess it's important to all of us that we're doing right by each other." He nodded.

"'Nuff said," he concluded simply. "I rag on Nick a lot, but anyone says he's not a good guy and a good cop has to deal with me. But we both know he is not, uh, _ordinary_." Maura laughed in agreement as Schanke continued.

"Nick's one of the best and most honest guys I've met, always ready to help somebody, always putting himself second. But he always had his own personal cloud over his head, no matter how nice he was being and no matter how much he smiled everyone was always waiting for it to rain. Since you showed up the weather's a little better. Still partly cloudy, but better. I just thought you might like to know." These were the most serious words she'd ever heard him utter in a row.

"Well thanks, Don, yeah it is nice to know I haven't joined his angst parade. I do what I can." Both of them looked over to where Nick was chatting amiably with Grace and Natalie. It seemed those clouds were dispelling, too. Then the serious mood evaporated.

"Now if you can just get him to start eating _normal_ food," Schanke urged. She threw her head back and laughed out loud. Across the room, Nick felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in a delicious shiver.

"You okay?" Grace wanted to know. Natalie had seen, and understood immediately.

"Fine. Just a chill, I guess."

"Comes with anemia," Natalie "reminded" Grace. She'd helped to establish that Nick had an unusual blood deficiency to justify her continuing lab work with him. It certainly wasn't far from the truth. Suddenly Maura appeared at Nick's side, with an odd smile.

"What _were_ you and Schanke talking so earnestly about?" Natalie asked. Nick hadn't seen, his back being to the room, and his eyebrows went up.

"Yeah, what so _earnestly_?" he echoed. She responded with a shrug.

"Stuff. Quantum physics, cultural evolution, the weather. Stuff."

One of Nick's eyebrows dropped and he looked at her suspiciously. "Stuff."

"Yeah," she leaned up into his face and insisted, "_stuff_." Their eyes locked and for a moment both Grace and Natalie were convinced they were about to see a full-bore PDA. But the look ended in a mutual smirk.

"Fine."

"Fine."

Suddenly Maura stifled a yawn, and dissolved in embarrassment at the laughter it triggered. "No, _really_, it's not the company! It's just been a long evening, you know? All this heavy social lifting I'm not used to."

"I'd say you did fine," Nick reassured her, stepping closer and resting his hand on her waist. He was falling into this "couple" role a lot more easily than he'd expected.

"I'd say you _both _did," Schanke announced to all. He and Myra were preparing to leave. "What do you think, Nick and Maura did okay venturing out of their natural habitat which would be, the living room right?" The targets of his joke smirked in unison.

"Go ahead, gimme a reason never to 'venture out' again," Maura invited. Myra Schanke poked her husband in the ribs, and not too gently.

"Never mind about the Great Social Commentator. It was lovely to meet you, Maura, and to see you again Nick. Maybe the four of us can get together sometime soon."

"Yeah, I think I'd like that," Maura replied without looking at Nick, who didn't look as if he entirely agreed.

"Well maybe you ladies could get together and threaten Toronto," he suggested, indicating Grace, Natalie, Myra and Maura, "but I think Schanke and I spend quite enough time together as it is."

Schanke affected a nervous expression. "I dunno, partner, are you sure we want to unleash this crew on the city? Our job is hard enough as it is."

Now the four women in attendance united indignantly, but before they could reply as one a voice drifted out from the bandstand: "Luna! Hey Luna, come on up for one!"

Maura's head whipped around. Even Nick didn't know how she occasionally sang with the band during their last set at the club. Nothing too professional, but she could carry a tune and they had a blast.

"Who's Luna?" Myra asked. By this time Derek, the lead guitarist, had rushed to her side and taken her arm.

"Come on, babe, this crowd wants to _rock_ and we know you know how!"

Maura turned a bit sheepishly to her company. "Uh, 'Luna' is, er, moi. Luna Noir, sort-of French for Dark Moon." Puzzled looks from all except Nick and Natalie, who managed to feign blank stares. "Don't ask. It's just a silly nickname." Derek pulled on her arm.

"C'mon, let's liven up these stiffs." Maura choked back laughter... Derek was a vampire.

"Okay, then," she agreed, her sleepiness burned off in a flash, and she ran with Derek to the stage.

"How about..." she pondered the possibilities.

"Fire Down Below?" suggested Dryden, their bass player and they all exchanged wicked smiles as they dared Maura to crank it up. She seized the mike from the stand and slid into a Bette Midler strut and grind that surprised everyone present except those on stage. "This one's for all you frustrated vice cops... and you know who you are," she pointed dead at Schanke, who with Myra and Nick had ventured near the band stand. Then they tore it up for the next ten minutes including an extended guitar break that had her doing a dirty boogie behind Derek and Dryden in turn, then sandwiched between the two. By the time the last chord wailed out there was not a closed mouth in the house.

"Jesus, Knight, that is one wild woman you got there. I had no idea." Schanke was stunned.

"Neither did I," he muttered in disbelief.

Maura leapt off the stage and minced up to Nick like an animated Barbie doll. "So, did I do okay?" she asked innocently.

Nick slapped a neutral expression on his face and shrugged. "I've seen worse." She shoved him hard.

"Thanks a heap." Suddenly she covered an extravagant yawn. "Now I'm _really _tired." She turned to Nick and asked almost plaintively, "Can we go home now? No offense," she added to their companions.

"Well to be honest, it's way past my bedtime," Myra confessed. "Come on, Superhero, let's go home." She and Schanke said their goodbyes and started to go, but not before Schanke turned and declared, "Well I'd say tonight was a success, huh Maura?" And with a wink they were gone.

"Congratulations, Nick, you guys really earned this," Natalie hugged Nick and kissed his cheek. "I gotta take off too." She even hugged Maura. "See, we don't bite. Well most of us anyway." She and Grace exited together, leaving Nick and Maura standing alone amid the departures of his colleagues, many of whom stopped to shake hands and offer congratulations. Finally Maura took Nick's arm and dropped her forehead to his shoulder.

"I'm beat. Let's fly away home."

He arched an eyebrow. "How about the usual ride?"

"Oh, all right. But you still gotta take me sometime."

Nick draped an arm around her shoulders as they left the convention center. "When's your birthday?"

"16 July."

"It's a date."

When they got home Nick went straight for the fridge and grabbed two bottles, tearing the cork out of the first with his teeth and spitting it onto the counter unceremoniously before guzzling.

"You must be starving," Maura sympathized. He finished off the first bottle and started on the second, reaching into the fridge for a third. What she didn't know was that her final performance had triggered a bit of vampire lust in Nick, that sort of horny/thirsty burn that made him feel a little dangerous when she got too close. After killing two and a half bottles the thirst was beaten back but the horny remained. He reached over and pulled her to him.

"You know, you really set that place on fire tonight," he told her. She could see the faintest throb of gold in his eyes.

"Uh-oh, pushed some buttons..." But she slipped an arm around his waist and leaned into him. God, he was burning up. He kissed her then, for some reason a spark of anger mixing with the more sensual fire. Sometimes she showed a smugness, a knowing attitude that pissed him off, and the fact he was capable of the same himself didn't seem to register. He knew she didn't push him on purpose but when she found out it had happened she could respond like a beautiful woman who knows she's triggered a world class hard-on.

"Just a few," he muttered when he let her up for air. She jumped as he buried his face in her neck, leaving his parted teeth pressed into her as if he were making up his mind.

She tightened her hand at the back of his head and held her breath. This wasn't the first such surge of physical heat Nick had displayed. The last time was almost a month ago, and couldn't be blamed on the new moon any more than this time could.

It was late, and Nick had returned home from a hideous shift. He'd had to go with Schanke and notify the parents of yet another victim of the serial rapist-murderer, accompany them to the morgue for the i.d. At that time the case seemed like the myth of Sisyphus, rolling the rock up to have it roll back down over them. Tired, frustrated, and beginning to suffer from the anguish projected by the victims' families, he had swilled down three bottles before dragging up to bed. His careless slamming about woke Maura, who immediately realized the trouble.

"Let it go, Nick, just for a little while you have to let it go, or it's gonna ruin you," she'd told him as he collapsed into bed. He lay on his back with one arm flung across his eyes, as if that could shut out the most recent mother's face.

"I can't, okay?" he snapped. "It's not like you and the club, I can't just walk out the door and forget it happened. I'm not like you, I can't throw it all out with the empties."

It hurt her that he felt she took these things so lightly. "I don't 'throw it all out'. Not the important stuff, not stuff like this. I just know when to put it in the corner for later. Jesus, Nick, do you really think you're the only one who takes it seriously? It's one thing to care about it, to stay focused to solve the case, it's another thing to let it consume you so there's nothing left to reason with. That's all I'm saying. But don't worry, there's not much chance you'll end up 'like me'." She rolled on her side, facing away, and shut her eyes. In a moment she felt his arm reach around her waist, pulling her onto her back. He was so warm.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. You're right, this case is eating me up. It's going so slowly, no matter what we do, and every day that goes by we hold our breath waiting for another family to destroy." She saw his face close to hers in the flicker of the candle that he always lit next to the bed. More than disturbed or weary, there was a sadness there that went deeper than any she could imagine. He knew what was what, he knew how it went, but it didn't help.

"You're not destroying them," she tried to assure him, tracing light fingers along his cheek. The light scruff of beard that would feel like sandpaper on a mortal was like velvet on a vampire.

"You wouldn't be so certain if you were with them at the i.d." She knew there was no answer to that, because it was true. So she said, "Just rest now, okay? Just hand some of it over, just for a little while, you know I'm strong enough to keep some of it for you, just long enough for you to rest a bit."

She tried to pull his head to her shoulder, the only thing she could think of to do for him, but he resisted and looked into her eyes for a minute more before lowering his mouth to hers. Different this time, not just his usual closeness, there was a need she recognized as mortal. He _felt_ mortal to her, warm and passionate in a way that had nothing to do with magic or blood or the phase of the moon. She reached her arms around him, wanting him now in a way she'd resisted or ignored in the many nights she'd shared his home and bed. Different, they were different and they knew it, their connection had no analog in mortal terms, but right now in this moment he felt no different to her than any man she'd known except she trusted and cared for him more. When he raised his head for a moment she covered his face with kisses, "Okay, Nick, it's okay," and pulled his mouth to hers again, now letting her hands roam the heat of his body, almost forgetting it would fade before too long. She knew who and what he was, but she also knew his kind was able to make love in the mortal sense, though she hadn't experienced it herself. And because she hadn't, she believed such things merely ebbed and flowed differently in his kind, but otherwise were similar. She had no way of knowing she was wrong.

A growl rumbled in Nick's throat, he embraced her roughly, gripping and caressing her in a way she hadn't expected from someone so typically gentle. It was as if he wanted to consume her physically in the same way his torment was consuming him emotionally. He nipped her neck and shoulders, kissed and bit (but drew no blood) and clutched at her with growing strength. It didn't exactly frighten her, but in the back of her mind she knew something wasn't quite as she expected. Still, the added heat he threw off loosened something in Maura she hadn't felt in so long, she could barely remember ever feeling it. With a power that surprised her she dragged his face back to hers and fastened onto his mouth as if she were the vampire and he her prey, sliding her hands inside his t shirt and sweatpants, reaching for him as she'd reach for anyone she wanted so much. And suddenly, he was gone.

After a second of shock she gasped "Nick? Nick, what," and then she saw him, standing across the room, seeming to have appeared from vapor. His mouth was parted, fang-tips showing. But what jarred Maura were his eyes. They glowed blood-red, like some mad animal. And for the first time, she was afraid of him. She half-rose in bed, then froze as he seemed to focus on her with grumbling snarl. This was nobody she knew. He flew to the door without touching the rug. He uttered just two words as he left, and they echoed from him as if from a deep cave, a voice Maura had never heard to match the eyes she had never seen.

"Not you," he boomed as he slammed the door behind him.

Maura fell back in bed, barely breathing. What was this transformation? She knew from her years living with vampires that they could and did make love with each other in the "conventional way" and with mortals as well. Nobody had ever mentioned this, not even the ones who made much of their changeable forms. The fear in her was a new thing, and she didn't like it. It felt to her like a betrayal of someone she trusted with her life. It was almost as if he were protecting her from something in him, something totally unfamiliar. They had told each other so much, she had been among his kind so long, she fancied herself intimately knowledgeable of all aspects of his life and being. And now she knew she'd been wrong. Still, she didn't dare pursue him to ask. To wait seemed wiser, and safer. For both of them.

When she woke from a bare few hours' sleep Nick was sitting on the bed looking at her. Without meaning to she flinched back, and his pained reaction stung her.

"We need to talk," he said quietly. "You need to understand something, something we've never talked about."

She sat up against the headboard, not wanting to say anything yet, but looked him calmly in the eye. More calmly than she felt.

"I'm sorry I scared you. I'm sorry I hurt you, don't bother saying I didn't." Just now she was aware of the pain in the places he'd gripped her so hard last night. When she reached up to move her hair back from her face she saw the angry purple marks on her forearm. There had to be more. She could feel them.

"You have to know that passion is different for a vampire than a mortal. We've been there, the connection that has no parallel in mortal experience. But you've lived among us so long, you know we haven't forgotten about mortal, physical passion. You know we experience it with each other, and with mortals as well. And you think because we can still make love that it's pretty much the same thing. Only more so."

She almost blushed. He was exactly right. She'd heard the stories, of vampire sexual prowess, though never from anyone describing his own behavior. Like herself, they were legends based in someone else's experience. He saw her color change, and in spite of everything had to resist a smile before continuing.

"Vampire passion is savage, when we come together it's a form of madness. It _has _to be to transcend an everyday existence where power and sense are limitless."

He couldn't be serious. "So you're saying it would be _dangerous _for me to do it with you?" It was her turn to fight a smile. He caught on immediately and answered her with a sharpness that brought her wit up short.

"Don't equate this with some mortal male delusion of prowess. You know I've had many lovers, though not as many as you probably imagine. But I haven't 'done it' with a mortal woman in nearly a century." He didn't elaborate, but light was beginning to dawn.

"And you haven't _killed_ in that long, have you?" His silence told her she was right. "So sex was part of the kill?"

His expression was haunted. "Sometimes. Often. Rape, plain and simple, and if I didn't kill the lady in question I brought her across. Though I was much more _selective_ in those cases." There was a bitter sarcasm in the last statement.

"Not you," she murmured almost to herself, and the meaning became clear in a rush. She couldn't be brought across, being who she was, and so the only alternative he saw was death. But this understanding was swept aside as all at once she felt like she'd been punched in the stomach with realization. "Oh god, Nick, no wonder this case is tearing you up." The vampire as penultimate serial rapist/killer.

"I'll be all right. You living here with me _helps_ me be all right, even when it seems like I'm not. You can't imagine what I was like before when something like this was going on. But I wanted you to understand how careful I have to be. What's between us is powerful, and there's a danger in it that you refuse to recognize. You saw it last night."

"I saw someone I'd never seen before," she admitted, "but now that I know why, it's not so dangerous is it?"

Nick shook his head. "Understanding isn't safety.'

"No. You are." She scooted closer to him and kissed his cheek. "I'm not afraid of you, Just Nick, and I'm not afraid of us. But I won't make life harder for you, especially not now." From then on she'd stayed within their established parameters, regardless of what feelings were raging in her. No, she wasn't afraid of making love with him. What terrified her was something else, something she could sense growing in their connection, against which she had no defense at all.

And now they stood in the kitchen after enjoying being together all evening, and in that single held breath all of it replayed in her mind. When he pulled himself away from her, she frowned.

"I got carried away, I'm sorry."

"I wish you'd stop being sorry. You know, you hadn't had human blood for a hundred years until you met me, and the sky didn't fall."

He smiled gently. "Yeah it did."

"You know what I mean," she followed him into the living room. "Can't we talk about this some more?"

Nick looked amused as he flopped on the sofa. "You sound like a horny prom date."

"Don't _do_ that!" she shouted, standing angrily over him. His smile disappeared. "Don't make fun of me! We share a life, we sleep in the same bed, we practically read each other's thoughts. Be with me or not," and both understood what she meant, "but let it be because it's what you want, or _don't_ want, not because you're _afraid_. If you wanna save me from something, let me tell you that 'sex and the single vampire' isn't at the top of the list."

Suddenly he remembered what she'd said when they were dancing, about being headed for trouble.

"Maura, I," he began, rising to follow her to the stairs. She whirled on him in a rage.

"If you say 'I'm sorry" I'll drive a table leg through your fucking heart!"

He stopped, hands dropped to his sides. "What do you want me to say, then?"

Her fury screeched to a halt. "I don't know," she said simply and sat down abruptly on the stairs. He knelt in front of her, looking her straight in the eye with the familiar, knowing expression.

"Yes you do." He arranged the velvet skirt around her feet, rested his hands on her knees. "I _do _love you, Maura, after only two months, in every way you could think of. I love your courage and your wit, and your kindness. I love your laugh as rich as sweet wine, the fire in your green eyes that even the worst of my kind hasn't put out. And I love how you tell me over and over I'm nobody I shouldn't be. When you say it like that, so certain, I can almost believe it myself."

"Well it's true. Why can't you just _trust _me?"

"Come on. How could I tell you all this if I didn't trust you?"

She considered this. "I guess you're right. But have we got anything figured out? I'd hate to have missed it if we did."

He shook his head. "Probably not. But do you still think you're 'headed for trouble'?"

She nodded, eyes wide and filling with tears. "Yeah. I still think so. Because you're never gonna believe like I do. There's always gonna be one last part of you thinking you're doing the world a favor by holding back, that it might even be a better place without you, and thinking you have to wait for some magic critical mass of good deeds before they actually begin to count. Like you're too evil for anything you do to be really good and honest." As always, she used the word evil as if it were someone else's idea. "You hurt people more by believing that than you ever could by just being who you are." She wasn't just thinking of herself now, but Natalie, and even Schanke. All the people who cared about Nick but were held at arm's length "for their own good". "It's not right Nick, and it's not fair, not to any of us. You know what I want to hear more than anything?" and now tears were running down, something he'd never seen from her, and something she hadn't done for years, "Tell me what's done is done, and you've given up trying to pay for the past." He moved closer, wiping at her tears with his fingers. "_Tell _me," she insisted, "tell me you don't hate yourself anymore. How can you love anyone when you hate yourself?" When he took her in his arms she cried into his shoulder as if her heart were breaking. She didn't want to love him, he was so screwed up and conflicted that even as he held her she swore she could feel the knots twisting inside him. And he knew it, he could tell because he could read her as he read himself. Her blood told him everything.

"Sssh, don't cry, it's not that bad," he kissed and petted her as he knelt on the stairs and she cried her every fear and hurt for him into his fading warmth. "Don't you know," he whispered, "don't you know, that's not what I want anymore, it's not what I need. It's an old habit, though, and I have to learn to break it. I'm learning, Maura, really, I'm learning to let the past go, but I have so much more of it than you do. Don't let it hurt you so much, Sweet, don't. I know you love me, I won't let that hurt you either, I swear I won't." She hugged tight to him for a moment longer then pulled back, hands in her lap.

"I'm such a neurotic baby."

"No. You're the best surprise that could have happened to me, and I love you." He rested his forehead against hers. Maura knew he meant what he said, in more ways than any mortal could describe or imagine, but she understood them all. She rose and went up to the bedroom, with Nick trailing behind holding her skirt like a train.

"I love this dress so much, I hate to take it off."

Nick was in his dressing room getting into the black silk pajamas he wore when he tired of the t-shirt-and-sweatpants routine. Drama aside, it had been a good night and Maura had really enjoyed herself out in the "real" world.

"Then don't. I won't tell Janette."

"You won't _have_ to," Maura laughed. "You two have a telepathy that makes ours look like smoke signals. On a windy day." She changed into flannel pj's while Nick busied himself hanging things up and putting things away. He didn't exactly turn his back and close his eyes, but there was an implicit privacy he afforded her even when he was in the room. Funny, really, considering the intimacy of their lives. She was bundled under the covers by the time he finished tidying up.

"You're cold, aren't you," Nick observed as he pulled up the extra silk comforter to cover her.

"Yeah you know how it kicks in more when I'm tired." She felt on the edge of not quite warm enough at the best of times, a function of her "condition". "Don't go downstairs, I'll be fine." Nick often slept on the sofa when he was concerned for her comfort. No matter how much he drank before retiring, by sunrise his temperature usually dropped to the point where he radiated cold as if it were heat. Maura would scrooch to the far side of the bed and wrap as many covers around her as she could, but sometimes the only thing that would save her was his departure to the other room.

"You'll thank me come summer," he'd promised her one night.

Tonight, though, she didn't want him away from her. Not after the things they'd said. She so enjoyed being close to him all evening, nothing to hide and surprisingly little to explain, that she was loath to lose the feeling so soon.

"Okay, but if you start to freeze don't blame me." She knew he'd never wake before he was ready, not if she shook the whole bed apart. But the blood he'd drunk still burned within him, and Maura moved close as he got into bed.

"You're hotter than me, right now."

Nick laughed quietly. "I always was."

"Well don't keep it to yourself, okay?" Maura yawned and snuggled so close Nick was forced either to put his arms around her or back away. He chose the former.

She sensed his hesitation. "Don't be such a wuss, Just Nick." She was looking him earnestly in the eye, head next to his on his pillow. "I love you too, y'know. Can we just not make this all a big dramatic thing?"

Nick started to laugh. He couldn't help it. The absurdity of their relationship coupled with her casual "so what" attitude struck him as funny. "Okay. You're mortal and I'm a vampire, and we've got intimacy without sex and love without romance. But no drama. I think I got it." She stifled a giggle.

"Yeah we are a fucked up pair."

"Uh-uh, none of that." He mirrored her grave expression, then kissed her gently. "Go to sleep, Luna Noir. Some things are better not figured out." He tucked her head under his chin. "I'll keep you warm as long as I can."

She tried to stay with him, she really did. But as he predicted his falling temperature forced her to pull away hours later. Only once before did he truly wrap her up against him, unable to pull away, as they both went to sleep. It was a dreadful mistake. What began as closeness and security ended with her clasped in frigid, inert arms. Asleep he was nothing like himself, cold, corpse-like. Maura was miserable, cold and alone. Nothing could waken him, she knew, it was like being trapped by rigor mortis. When he woke she was nervous and upset, not having slept at all, so cold she had to wrap herself in three fat silk comforters and still she trembled for ages afterwards. Tonight she just smiled and kissed him once more before settling on his shoulder, his arms resting loosely around her.


	6. Chapter 6

The following night was the first time Maura encountered the tall stranger in the alley. She took him for a street guy, though older than the usual, one of the curious who hung out in the back, as she glimpsed him from the back door. In a moment though she knew he was one of them. Unfamiliar, he had the furtive look of a newcomer but the edge of someone who knew how to take care of himself. For some reason he seemed to be trying to pass for mortal. And would have, if she were ordinary. He was lounging on an upturned milk crate, his cape-like black overcoat draping around him with curious elegance.

"Help you?" she asked him as she stacked her cases of empties. Funny Vachon hadn't mentioned the guy when he'd dumped them by the door for her.

"No thank you, I'm fine. Quelle nuit splendide, n'est-ce pas?"

"D'accord." She went back to the door a couple of times to bring more cases to stack next to the dumpster. He didn't offer to help, just watched as she worked. When she'd finished, she wiped the dust from her hands and approached the stranger.

"You're new around here. I'm Maura, I manage security for the club." She always introduced herself like that, it established her authority from the get-go in case someone was looking for trouble, and let them know she wasn't just some clueless bar back.

"Multitasking, I see," he replied, with a lazy wave to indicate the stacked cases of empties. "Janette likes her employees to show initiative." He hadn't shaken her proffered hand, so she withdrew it.

"You know Janette?"

He shrugged, casual. "We've crossed paths now and then." Given all he'd heard about such creatures as this, LaCroix was mildly surprised (or as much as he was by anything) to see nothing very remarkable about this Maura. Aside from the wafting fragrance of honeysuckle and amber, subtle but permeating, there was no indication that she was anything but a run-of-the-mill mortal. Nothing in her appearance, pleasant in a rough way but far from arresting, nothing in her manner, which was anything but that dreadful ethereal aspect that usually drew Nicholas out of himself when he imagined it called to him. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, except perhaps to see something distinctive in the woman who had engaged Nicholas' interest, no, more than engaged it, for the first time in decades. As jaded as he was after witnessing centuries of his protégé's varying liaisons, he knew this one was different. And for the first time in centuries genuine curiosity was aroused, though he'd deliberately chosen to come to her during the high cycle of the moon. Curious he was, and determined to learn more, but even he was uncertain of the effect of one of her kind during the new moon. He preferred a guaranteed upper hand as he examined the seismic shift he'd sensed in Nicolas, from thousands of miles and many years away.

"Well why don't you come in and say hello? She's in the office."

"Yes, counting the night's receipts no doubt. No thank you, we can become reacquainted some other time." He said this in knowing fashion, as if he knew Janette far better than he let on. It had been a long night, and Maura wasn't in the mood for phony charm and banter.

"Look, mister, you're obviously not into sharing your name with me. You can tell me, or not, or come in, or not, but I have work to finish up before my ride gets here."

A subtle smile pulled at the pale stranger's mouth. "Your 'ride'. Better than someone waiting at home, is someone who comes to bring you there." He added, half to himself and with dry amusement, "He must be very much 'in love'." LaCroix rose to move into the streetlight, and was impressed when Maura stepped toward him instead of away. Most mortals fell back a step or two. But she was no ordinary mortal, was she?

"You read a lot into a couple of words." In fact Nick had left with Schanke today for Ottawa, to be deposed about a killing connected to a federal drug case. Vachon, now dropping off one of the waitresses, would return shortly to drive her home.

"I'm not sure what you're looking for, Mr. X." She answered his affected stare of wide-eyed innocence with a sharpened tone. "We both know that _I _know who you are. That is, _what_ you are. And you know the same about me." His continuing cool appraisal of her was annoying. Who the hell did he think he was? "If you're waiting for me to be impressed or afraid, don't hold your breath. Then again, you've been holding it for a long time, haven't you?"

LaCroix laughed, his usual ironic timbre replaced by something as close to genuine delight as he was capable of. "Familiarity breeds levity. You _are _an unusual creature."

"Friend of mine makes the same observation."

"No doubt. I won't keep you any longer, your 'ride' mustn't be kept waiting. Adieu, Maura. You're a most engaging young woman."

Maura found his attitude of intimacy insolent, and offensive. "You have no idea what I am, beyond the obvious."

That smile again. "Perhaps not." He bowed with exaggerated graciousness. "Do give my regards to Mademoiselle Janette."

"Who should I say was here?" A last attempt at identification.

He straightened. "She'll know." And he was gone. She might have been impressed if she wasn't so used to the showy exits and entrances of her colleagues. Shaking her head, she went inside and bolted the door before heading to the office. When the money was locked in the safe (Janette did not believe in banks, having lived through too many of their failures) and they'd settled on the work schedule for the following week, Maura sat back in her chair.

"Met an old acquaintance of yours tonight."

Janette looked puzzled. Nobody outside of the regulars and tourists had been here tonight, surely nobody she knew.

"Didn't give me his name, just said you'd 'know' who I was talking about. Tall, pale as, well, the rest of you, piercing dark blue eyes, well, like the rest of you.' All vampires seemed to have piercing dark blue eyes, she'd learned. "Spoke French. A little, anyway. White hair, brush cut, kind of like an undead Marine. _Very_ elegant manners, but he wears his arrogance like expensive cologne." Janette looked uneasy.

"He didn't give you a name?"

"Nope. Before he left he bowed like a courtier, and said 'Do give my regards to Mademoiselle Janette."

Janette muttered something under her breath that Maura couldn't hear. "You didn't recognize him? Nobody that you've ever heard myself, or Nicolas (she offered this with an odd tone of voice) mention?"

"Not at all. Just another of the Eternity Fraternity passing through, as far as I could tell. Doesn't he sound familiar?"

"Bien sûr." She forced a smile. "An old acquaintance, as you say, and fellow member 'of the Fraternity'." Janette tolerated Maura's flippant characterizations because she was so completely indoctrinated into their existence, even finding some of them amusing. And there were many more things she would be willing to overlook for Nick's sake. But this little omission of his was hard to comprehend. If Nicolas was so devoted to this mortal, so concerned with her well being and now so attached to her, why on earth hadn't he told her about LaCroix, the one unavoidable danger she was guaranteed to encounter by virtue of her connection to him? More dangerous, in fact, than anyone she'd faced during any of her new moons because his was more than an opportunistic interest. Her presence in Nicolas' life made her an irresistible target for LaCroix, who paled her other dangers by comparison. Janette should have known he'd be back, that no matter where he was or what debauchery he was enjoying he would _sense_ that an elemental change was happening in Nicolas. Having lost Nicolas a century ago as a willing partner in depravity, the older vampire had satisfied himself with the knowledge of his young protégé's misery. Unwilling to accept what he was and unable to become what he felt he should be, Nicolas' continuing torment and consistent failure at self-redemption provided LaCroix with a vindictive pleasure nearly equal to that he'd enjoyed as he and his creation reveled in the depths of their dark existence together. He had been willing enough to leave Janette alone since they'd parted so long ago, undisturbed and even impressed (in his superior fashion) by her ease in creating a life and livelihood wherein their "condition" was actually an asset, their culture as both an entertainment for mortals and an enticement for them to be fed upon with little danger of discovery. And she could provide employment and residence for others of their kind as well. A dark symbiosis, LaCroix had called it. But Janette knew that the prospect of Nicolas finding a symbiosis of his own that might provide some semblance of peace, a vestige of relief from his self-loathing, could wake LaCroix from a hundred-year sleep. His arrogance simply would not tolerate it. And something else puzzled her, that she hadn't sensed his presence. He could prevent that, but only by design.

"Cherie, when is Nicolas returning from that tiresome trip of his?" He would have to be told of LaCroix's return, as his former mentor obviously was devoting himself to secrecy

"Day after tomorrow, he said," Maura told her as she gathered her things to leave. "I'm kind of enjoying having the place to myself for a few days. I haven't been on my own for a while." Not without being hyper-vigilant, anyway.

"Of course," Janette laughed, a little too lightly. "So nice to clear the air of testosterone from time to time." She followed Maura to the door, where Vachon was waiting. "Do me a favor, Maura, and tell dear Nicolas when he returns I'd like him to pay a visit as soon as he can."

Maura had a strange sense about this, but nothing she could put her finger on, and wrote it off to another of Janette's eccentricities of friendship. "I can give you his hotel phone number, if it's important."

"No, that's not necessary cherie. Just tell him I'd like to see him. So I can hear his details on your night of dancing and camaraderie, of course." Then to Vachon, who was jingling his car keys like a very mortal man impatient to get going, "Vachon, see Maura into the loft, will you?" Seeing the odd looks on Maura and Vachon she added dismissively, "I promised Nicolas we'd look out for _son doucette _in his absence, and he will know if we haven't. I'll see you tomorrow night, mes petits." It being Sunday, the club would usually be closed for the next two days. Most clubs were closed on Sunday but Raven seemed to attract a special crowd on that day, those who seemed to find a particular thrill in despoiling the Sabbath. This week a private birthday party had rented the club for Monday night; Vachon and Maura had agreed to tend bar and work security respectively. Janette, as always, would play hostess.

"Don't worry, Janette, Vachon will be both chauffeur and protector. Or I'll fire his ass."

Vachon protested as they walked to his car. "You can't fire me, I'm a bartender."

"Just watch me. I have an 'in' with the boss."

"Well living with her ex may not be it," he warned as he got behind the wheel. "She's pretty protective."

"Then I guess we're in the same boat, huh?"

As they pulled away neither of them saw the tall figure leaning against the wall just beyond the circle of the street light.

"So our Nicolas has found himself a pet." LaCroix appeared in Janette's office without greeting, and she betrayed no reaction as he settled in one of the velvet chairs as if he'd been there for years.

"I knew you couldn't stand it, Lucien. You are so sadly predictable." Janette finished locking her desk and the side room, and sat down to face him.

"'Stand' what? Surely you can't be implying that I wouldn't welcome the notion of Nicolas rediscovering the pleasures he's denied himself for so long?"

Janette stared at him with disdain. Who exactly did he think he was talking to, with this ridiculous charade? Now he leaned forward, with the eager expression of a village gossip and the tone of voice to match.

"But you must tell me, is he very much in love with her? More to the point, is he... in thrall to her blood? _Tell_ me, Janette, is her hold on him as powerful as the legends would have it?" He appeared delighted by the possibility that Nick was bound against his will, forced by his deeper vampire nature into something he would ordinarily condemn.

Janette shrugged. "He seems... content. More than that I do not know. I hired Maura several months ago, and she and Nicolas met through his many visits."

"Liar!" he shouted with laughter to the ceiling before nailing her with his eyes, "You introduced him to her, you wanted to see what would happen to him. . You must have found out by now. Don't try to lie to me Janette, I know you far too well"

"LaCroix, you are like a meddlesome child!" Janette scolded impatiently. She had long since ceased being intimidated by his insolent airs. His full-blown rages were another thing entirely. "Why can't you just let him alone, as you have left me alone? We don't interfere with you, why can you not return the favor?"

"I'm not in a magnanimous mood, I suppose. I despise posturing, and our Nicolas has postured as a frustrated mortal for quite long enough. Of course now he's achieved a rare conquest. You can't blame me for being curious."

"You're bored, LaCroix. Find yourself a battlefield, or a convent, or one of your usual ways of running amok and you will feel much better."

"Now Janette, after all we have meant to each other, you and I and Nicolas, how can you imagine I am not _interested _in his personal development?" He delivered the comment like a devoted guidance counselor.

Janette tired of the game. "Lucien, you have nothing to gain by interfering. What could you do to Nicolas that you have not done before?" Countless times over the centuries LaCroix had both set up and shattered Nicolas' romances and friendships, relentlessly determined to teach him that nothing could endure except the bond between the three of them, that nobody was worthy of loyalty but LaCroix himself and nobody else could offer what he could. The problem was that what Nick wanted was so beyond LaCroix' understanding that his only response could be to destroy whatever he saw Nicolas discovering for himself. Even after a century he had not given up on the notion that Nicolas could be brought back into his dark fold, that things could be as they once were if only his protégé would recognize that the only connections worth having were based upon power, not compassion, and certainly not love.

And now LaCroix, too, became bored by his little scenario. "I will leave you to your evening's pleasure, Janette." He knew that she, at least, continued in the same long established patterns of their kind. She would find a diversion, someone rich with blood and sensual enjoyment with whom she would entertain herself without a moment's regret. Janette rose as LaCroix exited the office.

"Find your own evening's pleasure, LaCroix, far from here. There is nothing to be had from Nicolas that you have not long since tired of."

LaCroix smiled to himself. He would be the judge of that, and soon.

After Vachon dutifully saw her into her own home and checked in the corners with a laugh for "demons", Maura noticed the message light flashing. She smiled in advance, knowing it could only be one person. He called at eight o'clock according to the time signature.

"Save me," Nick's voice began, without greeting. "Four hours in the car with Schanke and I'm ready to hitchhike back to Toronto when the time comes. He wants to go out on the town. I'm not sure I want to know why. Maybe he hopes to get me drunk so he can see what's locked in my electric cooler. With any luck the deposition should go quickly and I can persuade him to go back a day early. I think I miss you. Or maybe I just miss well-adjusted company. See you soon."

"'Well adjusted'," she laughed to the empty loft, "he _is_ in a bad way!" Maura found herself too tired to sit up and read, so she went upstairs and changed for bed. Spreading out in the silk sheets she felt a little guilty at the pleasure of having the big bed to herself. It was odd to be here alone, she thought, for the first time since she'd arrived. She reached over to pull his pillow to her face. He never wore cologne or anything with artificial scent, still she recognized him as she breathed deeply. If moonlight had a fragrance, Nick smelled like moonlight. Cool and still, like silver flowers. "I think I miss you too," she told the pillow as she drifted to sleep.

The private party went well the next night. A 30th birthday do for a financial analyst whose friends had decided on a Goth theme as the ultimate alter-ego event. It was actually fun, because none of this crowd had the oh-so-serious dark attitude of many of the regulars. It was a theme party, plain and simple. Aside from a few happy drunks trying to dance on the banquettes everyone was so well-behaved Maura had little to do but help Vachon at the bar. Even Janette, who usually found hosting private parties tiresome, took full advantage of the fact that nobody in this group took vampire lore seriously. She was able to be entirely herself, telling every terrible tale of her past that took her fancy, answering every curious question posed by the innocent guests who believed her to be play-acting. The company couldn't have been more entertained. Halfway through the evening, the young man who organized the fête approached the bar where Janette, Vachon, and Maura were observing the dancing. The boys managed to keep it just this side of satanic death metal, what they called their "tourist sets". Howard, the party organizer, was waxing rhapsodic over the decor, the music, and the staff.

"Really, this is exactly what we were hoping for, you have my friends eating out of the palm of your hand."

The metaphor raised three sets of eyebrows. Howard looked to be mid-twenties, dark and retiring. Just the kind Janette thirsted for, and Vachon and Maura were keeping an eye on their boss as a result.

"C'est nôtre plaisir, M. Dalton." Janette was charming the poor kid right out of his (likely borrowed) black leather jeans.

"But really, where do you all get the whole back story ideas from, how could you come up with this atmosphere, and the, well the _culture_ of vampirism? You all speak as if you've really been there." He looked a bit nervous, as if he may have offended someone. All three laughed but Maura spoke first.

"Some people just have that creative bent, Howard. When there _is_ no authenticity to strive for, it's easy to create your own."

Janette looked insulted for a moment, but her elegant snit was interrupted when Howard asked her to dance.

"Why, I'd _love_ to, M. Dalton." As she trailed him to the dance floor wearing a too-familiar expression, Vachon called after her, "Have fun, boss,"

"But not _too_ much," added Maura. Janette threw them the "death look" and they broke up. Everyone knew that Janette would never indulge with a private customer, regardless of how toothsome she found him. She was, after all, first and foremost a businesswoman. The everyday bar patrons, however, had to fend for themselves.

Maura glanced at her watch. There were no clocks at Raven, vampires having their own quite accurate internal clocks. It was closing in on 12:45 and the party had rented the bar until 1am. "Okay, Vash, it's that time. You rack 'em, and I'll stack 'em." As always, Vachon carried the cases of empties to the door and left them for Maura to put out by the dumpster. Tonight was a big wine night, so only two cases went out back. She took them together and set them in the usual spot. When she turned to go back in the bar, the door was blocked by the tall stranger from the night before, leaning against the doorframe as if he were an invited guest come out to get some air.

"Ah, you're wearing that lovely frock again."

Maura had been persuaded by Janette to "vamp it up a bit" by wearing the dress she'd had made for the awards dinner. She really wasn't in the mood for more forced cleverness.

"So glad you like it. Janette's inside, she seemed to remember you."

"I told you so." He smiled like a lizard sunning on a rock. But Maura knew the sun wasn't his element. She'd had about enough of this Whistler wannabe.

"Y'know you were amusing for a few minutes last night, it's always amusing to see someone who takes himself so seriously be worth taking so lightly. But I'm way past being impressed by the droll worldly vampire routine, so why don't you move it on to someone who is."

LaCroix was tripped up for a moment by Maura's insolence. He wasn't accustomed to such a response. Then again, he'd never encountered one of the prized ones before. He stood to his full height and stepped forward.

"It seems Janette chose her 'security manager' well."

Maura stood toe-to-toe with him, though she had to look up to look him in the eye. She could see she'd pissed him off, there were glimmers of red in the depths. "I could ask what you want from me, but I just don't care. Are you waiting for me to scream for help? Forget it. I'm done screaming. Wanna know why?" No answer but the barest snarl of derision. "Because I'm not afraid of you, that's why. So you can glower and growl, float in the air or burst into flames. There's nothing you can do to me that hasn't been done before. I'm not brave, I'm not all-powerful. I'm just worn out by the whole sage, and I just don't give a shit anymore. Like I said, save it for somebody who's impressed."

Enraged, LaCroix seized her by the shoulders and lifted her a foot off the ground. Somewhere inside Maura wondered why she wasn't cowering in familiar terror. It could be the strangeness of the nearly-full moon, or maybe it was that she'd grown stronger in the past months than she'd been before. She knew he could crush her in his hands, but for some crazy reason it didn't make a dent in her attitude. Maybe she'd been telling the truth, she was just weary of the drama and this guy got on her last nerve as if her were just another annoying customer.

"You wanna taste?" she taunted. "You remind me of some others. Lots of them really. Dying of curiosity but a just a _little bit_ afraid. Is that it, dude? You wanna find out if it's true, but you're afraid you can't control it. Well you know you can't control _me,_ don't you?" His eyes drilled into hers. She didn't even flinch.

LaCroix dropped her abruptly, and she fairly bounced to her feet. "Surprise, the legends are true. You can't do your hypno thing on me, and you can't bring me across to teach me a lesson. Just who the hell _are_ you anyway?"

In spite of the buttons she was pushing in his ego, LaCroix regained his control. "You really aren't afraid, are you? I could sense it if you were, most mortals bathe in fear like cheap perfume." He paused. "Yours is... rarified, n'est-ce pas ?"

She made to push past him but he grabbed her almost without moving, and held her still entirely without effort.

"Well surprise to _you_, my dear, because I'm not afraid of you either. After all, it's the full moon, which renders you a dalliance and not an addiction." He gave the French pronunciation to "dalliance". He pulled her close against him in a parody of dance, and whispered in her ear, "Besides, I'm not interested in you. It's your vampire lover, your faux mortal dance partner, your latest _protector_ that interests me."

This stunned her. "You know Nick?"

Her reaction pleased him. "Oh yes," his voice was a sibilant hiss, like a snake ready to strike, "and I'm about to know him much better."

The brutality of his bite should have triggered a flashback response in Maura, instant replays of every past attack. As it was it merely triggered a jaded sense of resignation, a "here we go again", as the pain filled her and her mind faded to black.

Originally intending merely to plumb her blood for answers, LaCroix now wanted to punish Maura. His eyes widened, nonetheless, at his first taste. If this was her weakest blood, its power at the new moon must be fearsome. He was seized with an orgasmic rush, which fed itself into a surge of power. He felt like a god. Rather than the upswell of euphoria it triggered in Nick and others, it exponentially magnified LaCroix's natural feelings of omnipotence. It wasn't his intention to kill her, but he was so possessed by the glorious power he felt that soon he realized she was nearer to death than he'd planned to take her. This was simply to be his greeting to Nicolas, by way of giving themselves one more thing in common. As in any feed, his victim's life, thoughts, and psyche came to him in the blood. She was strong, and had more knowledge of his kind than he had imagined. She also was no threat to any of them, she felt more of them than of mortals. And since meeting Nicholas a spark had awakened in her that helped her abandon the beaten creature she'd been for so long. No more the vampire's whore, she met them on equal terms. He sensed no knowledge of himself in her. So Nicholas hadn't said a word. All this and more came to LaCroix in the continuing gush of Maura's blood, impossibly complex but easily assimilated. At last he tore himself away, and dropped her carelessly on the ground near the door. He was caught in a quandary. Killing her would accomplish nothing, his pleasure was to be in exploring the reaches of Nicolas's new life, and that would be impossible if the catalyst was eliminated. What to do? Eyeing her closely, he realized it might be too late anyway. No matter. He pulled the door open just a crack.

"Bitch!" he roared, enjoying his affectation of a drunken lout, "private party? I'm coming in anyway!" He thumped the door open for good measure and, certain he'd been heard, retreated to a nearby rooftop where he could witness what would follow.

A voice called out. "Luna?" A young vampire, long-haired and dressed for formal bartending, nearly stepped on Maura as he came through the door calling, "Under control out here?" He dropped to his knees and saw the marks, his head jerked up with a hiss, but must have been able to sense the low flutter of Maura's fading life even before he touched her. "Shit!" he exclaimed in very mortal fashion. Then, "Janette!" he roared in full voice, abandoning his role, as he scooped Maura up in his arms and turned to run back into the bar. "Janette! _TROUBLE!_" The bar door slammed behind him, and LaCroix was disappointed to be shut out of the proceedings. Oh well. He'd know soon enough.

Inside the last of the guests had been ushered out and the door locked behind them, moments before Vachon exploded into the room with Maura in his arms.

For the first time in memory, Janette's face went blank with shock. "Vachon! What on earth..." She cut off short when she saw the wounds on Maura's neck. Savage, even by her careless standards.

"I heard someone yelling at her, and when I went out to check I found her lying on the ground in the alley. Janette, she's dying, what can we do?" Another first; a distraught vampire.

Janette muttered rapidly. "Think, think, we obviously can't take her to the hospital, and Nicolas is out of town. There's nothing he could do anyway,"

"Janette! Didn't you hear me? She's _dying_!" He could feel the flicker in her getting lower. Both he and Janette knew well she couldn't be brought across, though it was doubtful they'd go to that length to save her.

"Bring her in my office," Janette ordered, grabbed the cordless phone off the bar in passing, and dialed the city morgue.

As she floored it on the way to Raven Natalie tried not to think about how many regulations she'd broken. How the hell could a coroner justify "requisitioning" five pints of blood and a transfusion set? Well she was a doctor after all, and the first rule was "do no harm", and letting Maura Logue die when she might be able to help would certainly be doing harm. She wondered if Janette had called Nick.

En route from Ottawa, Nick was enduring another of his partner's endless tales of college conquest. But he was so grateful that Schanke agreed to do a red-eye drive back to Toronto after the night deposition, he kept his mouth shut. And his eyes. He was halfway into a true fugue when something very like an electric shock ran through him from head to foot, making him start violently and nearly sending Schanke off the road.

"Jesus, Nick, you wanna get us killed?"

Nick shook himself, the jolt fading as quickly as it came. But in its wake was a distinct uneasiness, a knowledge that something wasn't right. "Sorry, Schank, don't know what happened." Not explaining further he pulled out his cell phone and dialed home. Not likely Maura would be home yet, but worth a shot. When the machine kicked in, he said, "We're halfway home. Schanke listened to reason, should be crawling in the door in a couple hours. See you soon."

"Partner, you are one romantic fool." But Nick was pushing buttons again, this time calling the club. No answer there either. That was really weird, because come hell or high water someone would be behind the bar right now, getting things just right for Janette's exacting standards. He didn't bother to leave a message. The nagging dread persisted, a physical sensation of burning in his head and chest that he'd never felt before.

"What the hell happened?" Natalie asked as she rushed to set up the transfusion. Maura's complexion had gone grey, her lips and eyelids pale blue. She was right on the edge, and Natalie wasn't at all sure she'd gotten the blood pumping in time. She set the i.v. to push. Too fast though, and her system couldn't handle it.

"LaCroix happened," hissed Janette. "I should have known he'd do something like this. Maura told me about a stranger chatting her up in the alley last night, he sounded very like LaCroix. Clearly she had no idea who he was. But he came to me later, asking questions. About Maura, about Nicolas, about how things might have changed for him because of her. You must understand, Lucien LaCroix is not subject to fits of idle curiosity. His interest lies in control, especially where Nicolas is concerned."

Natalie nodded as she dressed the ugly wound on Maura's throat. She could practically have bled to death from that alone. "I've heard some about LaCroix, but not much. Nick doesn't like to talk about him."

"Yes, well better he _had_ talked about him to Maura, then she would have some sense to protect herself from him. He is like a demonic child, LaCroix, and will indulge himself as far as he's permitted by circumstances."

"Are you saying he would have left her alone if she knew who he was?"

"Probably not. But she could have told me, or Nicolas, and together we could have persuaded him it was not in his best interests to interfere with her. Perhaps I should call Nicolas, and tell him there is trouble here."

Natalie checked the third pint of blood in the i.v. Now she changed it to a regular drip speed, setting the pump on low. Maura would maybe take in two more pints, but it seemed she was back from the brink.

"No, Janette, if you call Nick he might do something sudden, and reveal himself to Schanke. Better to call him later when I get her stabilized and he's less likely to fly straight up in the air from his hotel window."

Vachon ventured into the office, casting a nervous look at where Maura lay on Janette's Victorian fainting couch.

"How is she doing?"

Natalie smiled up at the young vampire. "I think we've gotten her back. If you hadn't gone out there when you did, she wouldn't be so lucky."

He shrugged philosophically. "You take some, you give some." He returned to the bar to finish closing up.

Nick shifted in his seat yet again.

"Want me to pull over?" Schanke offered.

"No, no. I just get this feeling that something's amiss at home, I just called and no answer. Then I called Raven, and no answer there either. It's just weird. How fast can this thing go?" They had taken a department unmarked to Ottawa. Schanke was about to make some smartass comment about his partner being pussy-whipped, but a glance at Nick's face changed his mind.

"Well I guess we're about to see, huh?" He hit the siren and Nick slapped the bubble on the roof as Schanke floored it.

"Hmm, 110 and still smooth, not bad. We'll be home in less than an hour."

After four and a half pints of blood Maura's color was beginning to return to normal, and her body temperature had risen to 96.3. Natalie decided to stop the transfusion and let her body make up what deficit might remain.

"I think it might be a good idea to get her home in her own bed. She's gonna need to be flat out for a couple of days." Natalie suggested. The intensity of what she'd just been party to overwhelmed any twinge she might have felt making that statement: "her own bed".

Vachon carried Maura to the limousine that Janette reserved for special parties of her own. He stretched her out in the back seat and held her head in his lap while Natalie sat next to Janette on the drive to Nick's loft.

"She really is gonna be okay," Natalie reassured Vachon, who seemed far too concerned for the average vampire. Natalie was beginning to grasp the special relationship that Maura had with these creatures. Their connection was more than just tolerance and need, it was obviously born of mutual empathy and common concerns. Before, whenever she'd seen Nick's kindness and concern for others she thought of how "mortal" it was. She was beginning to realize how arrogant that estimation was. Funny how crisis could burn off the bullshit, though maybe only temporarily.

Vachon carried Maura upstairs as Janette paced in the living room. Natalie got her into her pj's while Vachon discreetly turned away to pull open the bed. Between the two of them they got her tucked in securely and stood back to consider the situation.

"She should be fine if she rests and gets enough fluids."

Vachon couldn't suppress a smile. "I know the feeling..." His smile turned grim as he reached out a hand to touch her hair. "She didn't deserve this."

"Nobody does." Instantly Natalie regretted the harshness in her voice. He'd saved her life, after all. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Why did she believe that emotions were solely a mortal trait, along with kindness and loyalty?

Vachon's smile tightened along with his voice. "Of course. I'll go downstairs and see what Janette is up to."

Natalie wondered if she'd ever be able to mix with them as Maura did, speak the same language, stop judging them. That, she realized, was the difference between her relationship with Nick and Maura's. Maura accepted Nick bag and baggage, no judgments, for who he was. Nothing he shouldn't be, Nick told her once that was the most important thing he'd been told in centuries. He knew Maura believed, as nobody else did, that who he was, or almost-was, or tried to be, was enough, just so, and that his aspirations were as good as others' realities. Everyone else wished he could just be more this or less of that. And Natalie knew she was included in that number, and she wished she could change that. But she didn't know if it were possible for her, with her medical knowledge and hopes for change. That was the essence, she would never be able to fully accept that being mortal wouldn't be better for Nick, for any of them. And she knew that hurt him, even as he accepted her "help" in the spirit in which it was given, even allowing himself on occasion to share her definition of his nature as a "disorder". That is, until Maura arrived in his life and told him "You're nothing you shouldn't be." If it brought him such peace, how could it be wrong?

Breaking from her meditation, Natalie checked the dressing on Maura's throat. This bite wasn't healing as rapidly as those she had gotten from Nick. Then again, this was bestowed in violence and not love. She lit the massive candle that stood in the wrought-iron holder next to the bed, and turned off the lights. Leaving the door ajar, she went downstairs.

Schanke was as good as his word. Siren wailing and engine roaring, he got them to Nick's door in a little over forty minutes. Nick was wound so tight by the time they arrived, Schanke said nothing except "Hope everything's okay, call me." as Nick bounded from the car and let himself into the freight elevator. Some of the burning in his nerves had dissipated, but he knew instinctively things had gone terribly wrong and somehow Maura had been caught in the center of it. Caught. His knowledge crystallized as he burst into the loft and pulled up short to see Janette, Vachon, and Natalie conversing seriously near the stairs.

"What," he began, and before anyone could answer he flew straight up to the gallery and into the bedroom. As he approached the bed and saw the large bandage on Maura's throat, so pale and wasted she looked, he knew. Lifting her hand to his lips, he pressed the tiniest puncture into her fingertip and when he touched his tongue to the drop of blood that emerged he saw everything. He gripped her hand tighter and shut his eyes, dropping his head, speechless with rage and guilt.

"I would say she has had enough of that for one night, Nicolas," came Janette's chill voice from the doorway. His head jerked up, eyes aflame.

"Spare me your feral fury, Nicolas de Brabant, I haven't the patience for more drama tonight." Her expression was stiff with disapproval. "How could you not have told her, how could you be so _foolish _to think he wouldn't care, that he wouldn't interfere?

The fire in his eyes cooled, replaced by a deep shadow. "I don't know, Janette. I nearly did, a dozen times, we've told each other so much, the bad as well as the good. It's not as if I didn't tell her who I was, how I was..." he trailed off, looking back at the bed. "Maybe I thought a broad picture was enough. Maybe I thought to reveal all of it, and LaCroix is certainly all of it, maybe I thought that would be the one thing too much. The one thing I _shouldn't_ be. It was selfish, and dangerous, and stupid."

"Trop stupide, cheri," Janette told him, not without some sympathy. "She welcomes everything you are, and ignores what you are not. She believes you are absolutely complete in yourself. And whether or not any of us agree or approve, even I know that the darkest truth from your past could not drive her from your side." She approached him, put her arms around his neck, confessing with near-wistfulness, "I envy you that." He tightened his arms around her, and they both held tight.

"Thank you, Janette, thank you," he whispered to his ageless friend/lover/sister. She stepped away.

"It was your friend Dr. Lambert who saved her. I only called her. Who better to help me than a doctor of the dead?" She smiled wickedly at her own bleak joke, and Nick kissed her deeply.

"Maura is my heart," he told her, "but you're my soul, the only soul I have."

"Go to her, Nicolas, she will know you are here."

He went back to the bedside, staring at Maura's face, nearly transparent in its pallor, in the flicker of the candle flame. Bending, he kissed her forehead as if to seal her safety. "He won't touch you again, Sweet. No one will."

Maura felt cool lips on her skin, heard a quiet voice murmuring words she couldn't discern. She wanted to respond, but felt liquid, beyond weakness, as if she were suspended in something timeless and gelatinous . It was not entirely unpleasant, except for the fiery pain at the side of her neck. Even her mind felt weak, unable to recall what had happened or what all of this dissipation and fluidity meant. Long gentle fingers, then, also cool like spring water, tracing her cheek and spreading in her hair.

"Sleep now. I won't leave you alone." Now she could hear every word, but still was unable to reply. He lifted her hand again and kissed the tip of her finger where he'd drawn out the knowledge. "I love you," he whispered, then tucked her hand under the covers and joined his friends downstairs.

They were preparing to leave. "Natalie," Nick began, and ended by nearly crushing her in a hug. "How do I say 'thank you' for what you've done tonight?" She stepped back with a genuine smile of personal triumph.

"I think you just did. On second thought, you can go erase the memory of the night clerk in the blood bank."

"Anything. Just tell me what else and it's yours."

She looked serious now. "Nick, I know you have your reasons for holding some things back. But this little sin of omission almost cost Maura her life. I know we haven't exactly been friends, but I really believe there's nothing you can't tell her. Even if there were, it isn't fair not to. Not when it's something this dangerous."

Nick waited until she was finished. "There's nothing you can tell me I'm not telling myself. And that Janette hasn't told me. And if it's any consolation, let me tell you when she wakes up Maura is going to be a worse handful than a bundle of crucifixes. But you're right. I have nothing to say for myself. I think the best thing to do is just step back and let her do her worst."

Natalie gave an exaggerated shudder. "I'm glad I won't be here for _that_. You might hide anything made of wood bigger than a toothpick." He looked a bit confused, so she shook his arm and kissed his cheek. "Nick, she's gonna be fine. Make sure she gets enough fluids, and don't let her out of bed for a day or two, okay? I'll check in on Wednesday." As the trio of rescuers proceeded out the door Natalie turned again. "_Relax_, she's okay, okay? Go lie down or something, you look terrible."

No doubt, he thought bitterly as he locked the door and checked the shutters. He hadn't felt this wretched since the last (the final) time he took one of Natalie's garlic supplements. He hit the lights and went to the kitchen to get a drink. Starving, and feeling like an utter glutton, he drained four bottles and dragged upstairs to change for bed. Maura was where he'd left her, lying on her back, head turned toward his side of the bed, deeply asleep. He thought maybe her color was a little better. Wanting to be close to her when she woke, but not wanting to chill her into worse sickness, he pulled some extra silk quilts from the ornate oaken chest at the foot of the bed and spread them over her. Then he settled against her, safely insulated, and pulled another quilt over himself. He laid his head next to hers on the pillow and draped a protective arm around her. Too late to be protective, he knew. "Forgive me, Sweet," he whispered. It was some time before he went to sleep.

She felt him there, unable to open her eyes still she knew it had to be him. She didn't know about time or day or night, but felt a warm face resting against her own, a comfortable weight lying across her. It had to be him. Why was she so warm? She'd thought cold was all she'd ever be since... since, whatever it was that had happened. But she was cocooned snug and warm, and he was there, close, with her? She didn't understand. Still unable to open her eyes, still feeling too emptied and weak to move, she somehow managed to turn her head just a fraction, just a hair, to press him closer against her cheek. Deep in his customary slumber he didn't stir. Something was different, something inside of her, as if whatever happened had changed her in some elemental way. She felt safe, secure, but it wasn't him that made her feel that way. It was his presence, though, that _reminded_ her. It was too confusing to stay with for long, and she faded off again.


	7. Chapter 7

He stayed there with her the next day, calling in sick to the precinct and subsequently ignoring the phone, rising only once to go downstairs and drink three more bottles before returning to her side. He held her wrapped form as best he could, tucked her head under his chin where she sometimes slept while he was still awake reading or listening to music.

Sometime that evening Nick felt Maura stir against him and make the series of murmurs he called her "wake up sounds". She cooed like a dove in small purrs of sound when she was emerging from sleep, making successively more expansive movements as if cautiously exploring the conscious world before she returned to it fully. Now all of that was restricted by her wrappings of silk and velvet, and him.

"Nick?" she barely whispered, voice dry as the desert. He'd forgotten all about what Natalie had said about fluids, and flew down to the kitchen to bring up a large pitcher of water and a glass. Water was best, Natalie had told him, anything else might overpower her digestion at first and she would be badly dehydrated. He was gone only seconds but when he returned to the bedroom she was struggling to sit up, looking terribly confused and disoriented.

"Wha' th' fuck?" she slurred, a hand going to her bandaged throat as she was striving to focus on anything at all.

"Sweet talker," Nick smiled, "here drink this." She grabbed for the glass, suddenly ravenous with thirst. "Slowly," he cautioned, "or you'll make yourself sick."

She gulped down half the glass, then slowed as directed. Nick sat on the bed and reached out to smooth the hair out of her eyes. "Welcome back, Sweet." He leaned over and hugged her head to his shoulder, kissed her hair a few times, and released her.

"Where have I been? I was putting out cases, there was this guy," her eyes flew open as she remembered. "A _freak_, Nick, he was such a freak. He had come the night before, the night after the awards thing. He talked like he'd seen me before, or knew something about me, but not enough. It wasn't just about what I am, I'm sure of that. It was because of you, he even told me that just before he got me. He knows Janette, he said he knew you, we argued. I told him I wasn't afraid of him and that pissed him off _royally_."

"That would, more than anything in the universe. He's accustomed to being feared, and obeyed. But feared above all things. He considers it his right." She coughed a little, and he filled the glass again and this time held it to her lips so she couldn't guzzle it down.

"But Nick, it doesn't make _sense_. I'd never seen him before, never heard anyone mention him, but he told me it was you he's interested in and not me. He called you my 'vampire lover', and 'faux mortal dance partner', my 'latest protector, like he'd seen us at the awards dinner, like he knew who I was to you and it was making him crazy that he didn't know all about it. He _knows_ you and Janette. Who the fuck _is_ this freak, and why did he do this to me?"

Maura saw an expression on Nick's face she'd never seen before: utter shame. Regret was familiar, even guilt, but not this.

"There's nothing I can say to excuse what I've done. I didn't tell you about LaCroix, even though you think I've told you everything, about the things I've done and the terrible things I've been. He's at the crux of all of it, he was my creator, my mentor, he was my partner and lover and guide into the most debauched centuries of my life. He feels he owns me Maura, and maybe he does in some deeper sense that only he can understand."

Still it didn't make sense to her. "But if he created you, if he was so much to you and you to him, why didn't you ever mention him? Did he attack me to get to you? What happened to make him hate you that much, to make you pretend such a huge part of your history never existed?"

"He lost his partner in evil," Nick said simply. With a short sigh he asked her, "Can you just sit back and listen for a bit, and not ask anything until I'm finished? Then you can say, or do, or demand whatever you like. And whatever it is, I'll deserve it. Here," he pressed her back into bed, "lie down. You nearly died," his voice caught on the word, "and it's gonna take a couple days to come back all the way." She looked up at him in consternation, looking (and feeling) as if she were about to hear a very unpleasant bedtime story. Unable to look her in the eye, he began.

"When I was an exalted Knight of the Crusades, I was no better than the people I slaughtered as infidels. None of us were, I suppose, which is what made us such a rich hunting ground for those like LaCroix. He's older than me, centuries older, as is Janette. He'd found her as a prostitute in France, had brought her across as a companion and amusement. And bait. Even Janette and I didn't know how LaCroix started, who brought him across or what he was as a mortal, but as a vampire he found all the power and dominion over others he'd always lusted for, and took full advantage of it. Whatever else he'd been, he was a master debaucher who delighted in manipulating and destroying others. The purer their innocence, the greater the prize. When he gained immortality he reveled in it as a license to indulge every appetite that the laws of mortality had limited. He thought there hadn't been much he hadn't experienced, but he was wrong. And he was delighted, beyond imagining. Once he had Janette by his side they roamed the world in search of the darkest pursuits, the most depraved indulgences. And then they found the Second Crusade, and an endless variety of sin and willing participants in their games. I was one of them, for me too much could never be enough, no orgy drunken enough, no sink of iniquity deep enough. The shredding of the purest flower of virginity only sent me craving someone even more innocent to corrupt and destroy. I was a Knight, we were empowered by the king to do and take and abuse at will. And I did, and I enjoyed every moment of it. I met Janette as a camp follower, she came to me at a feast some landholder had held in order to buy us off. He'd supplied us with food and drink and virgins and whores, whatever we wanted, in order to spare his own family and possessions. And after I had taken Janette in every way imaginable, she took me. It was a new reach of sensuality, even for me. Too much indulgence can dull you, though I didn't realize it until that night, and suddenly my mind and body were on fire, for more."

He seemed firmly rooted in this other world he was describing. Maura interrupted in a hesitant voice, "But you said that this LaCroix created you."

Nick looked down at her as if he'd forgotten she was there. "Janette only indulged me, indulged _in_ me. When we were sated, when I _thought_ we were sated, she went to the door and told me there was someone who wanted to meet me, and stood aside to let LaCroix enter. She'd primed me, see, for him. Bait. And in my state of mind and body, I welcomed him. I wasn't his victim, Sweet, not like you were. I wanted him, and Janette, and all of it, more than life itself. When LaCroix brought me across I fell into it with an abandon I'd never even suspected in myself, for all that I'd done before. And for hundreds of years, the three of us cut a swath through humanity that makes the Marquis de Sade a priest in comparison. In fact we schooled de Sade in his legendary appetites."

She didn't know how to respond, or even if she should. That he had indulged himself in the most perverse behavior in his past was no surprise to her, he had admitted as much to her before. But she'd never known how it had happened until now, she had imagined that he had been taken from a good and compassionate life into an evil one and had made the best of it.

"LaCroix didn't turn me from a life of righteousness," he said, as if reading her mind. "He took on a willing apprentice. And a capable one. Soon all three of us were pimping for each other, or for all of us together."

"But if you enjoyed it so much, if it was just yourself but more so, what made you change your mind?"

Nick shook his head. "I'm not sure. I don't know when I started to notice things. The despair in the eyes of a dying victim, the starvation of their orphaned children. Worse than that, in the end, was the pain in the eyes of those whose trust I had used and betrayed. Who knows why or how it started, but once it did I couldn't stop it. And LaCroix saw. Janette saw it too, but she was always more willing to accept the ebb and flow of circumstance. Her taste was always more for self indulgence than power. Power was a means to an end, but to LaCroix power _was_ the end itself. Like any addict he needed more and more extreme circumstances to help him realize it. Even vampires can be endangered, and it was that recklessness and rage for extremism that finally drove us from him. That, and his unrelenting need to destroy every real connection I might make, with anyone. Any mortal male or female, anything that threatened my devotion to our twisted life made him wild to control me all the more."

This was familiar in the mortal world. "Like a jealous husband. Squared."

"Cubed." Finally he looked her in the eye, the sadness in his breaking her heart even as she felt a growing anger inside at his carelessness with her life. For what? To protect a reputation he didn't need? To defend himself from judgments that it would never have occurred to her to make? He went on.

"LaCroix took to studying me for anything he hadn't noticed in the previous six hundred years. He could read my emotions, emotions you know even vampires are prey to, and began to delight in playing them for effect. He would find a woman he knew I couldn't resist, one who would torment my need to connect with something normal and good, and he would engineer a proximity and finally a connection. If I didn't give in to my own nature he would step in and take her himself, condemning her as unfaithful, as common and boring and unworthy of our kind. He trained me always to be disappointed, wounded and doubtful. Or he would find someone more skilled at deception than I, who would draw me in and destroy me. Over and over he told me that he and Janette and I were the only center of the universe, that nothing else would matter for us and nobody else would understand or protect us as he would. We were too elite for common things like pity or kindness. And in any case, what we were would always have us repaid with hatred and betrayal. Better, he said, to be the betrayer, and to know in advance that there was no reason ever to be otherwise. Anything, he would do and say anything to keep us believing we needed our attachment to him to survive. But when he began threatening that survival and continually shattering any good I reached for, I had enough." He had told her about the ballerina. He had cast himself in the definitive role, though, as if it were he who had shocked himself into awareness. But it was now obvious that it had been the final betrayal before he left LaCroix for good. It had been a very long time ago, perhaps a hundred years, and was the catalyst for his abandonment of preying on humans. In fact he had shut himself away from any attempt at mortal connection since then, even as he mixed with them in this career and that, trying to repay with good deeds and meaningful contributions all of his past transgressions. He seldom really reached out to anyone but other vampires, and then cautiously. LaCroix's determination to keep Nick firmly locked into his "true" nature somehow tolerated that. It was the mortals who were the greatest threat. And that was one of the reasons for Nick's firm parameters surrounding his friendship with Natalie. In addition to believing himself fundamentally unworthy of a true lasting bond with anyone else he didn't want to risk attracting LaCroix's attention, and destroying yet more lives.

"But you knew," she said, unable to stop herself. "You must have known, once I was here, once we suspected what was happening with us, you _had_ to have known he'd be back. Jesus, Nick, he knew right where to find me! He _watched_ us, at the awards dinner, and who knows where else, he _had_ to have, how else would he know what I'd worn? He complimented me on wearing that 'lovely frock, again'." A wave of nausea overcame her, and she suspected it was not related to traumatic blood loss. She rolled on her side, so she wouldn't have to look at him.

"It's okay."

"_What's_ 'okay'?" From where she was, nothing was okay.

"Anything you need to say, or do, or throw at me, I deserve. I have no excuses."

"Well, goody for you," she muttered, not quite under her breath.

"Huh?"

"I said," and she sat up again to face him, "_goody_ for you, you have no excuses. But you're still looking for absolution, aren't you? _Still _hungering for redemption, along with an occasional taste of my magic blood. Well fuck you, Nicolas de Brabant, I am _not _your confessor."

She had never used his full name in anger, only in affection. He said nothing.

"I love you. I _trusted_ you. I haven't ever judged you, or wanted you to be anything but what you are. In fact, I may be the _only_ player in your current incarnation who can say that. And it doesn't make me noble, or special. But it doesn't make me a sucker either."

Nick tried to reassure her. "I never used your trust against you. I never lied to you."

Maura wasn't buying. "Wrong, you bastard. You told me I was _safe_ here, from the first fucking night we _met_ you swore to me I'd be safe with you. Lie to me? Not much. You just left out the minor detail that I'd bring the Pervert from Hell back like Armageddon he'd be coming for _me_ first to get to _you._ I guess that's not really a '_lie'_, is it, so you're off on a technicality." The bitterness and pain in her voice were worse than any angry outburst he'd imagined might happen. "And for _what_, huh? To defend your precious reconstruction? How could you think you had to protect a persona you don't _need_? You knew, from the first time you had me you knew, nothing you used to be could matter to me now. So what could you possibly have to gain from holding something back that could have saved me from this?" She tore off the bandage, knowing instinctively the wound left there hadn't healed. It was, in fact, ugly and discolored, a torn bruised oval that had barely skinned over even two days later. Nick winced at the sight of it. "Not pretty, I guess, is it?" She crawled to the opposite side of the bed as if to get away from him. "How could you not know? Worse than that, how could you know and not _believe_ in me? Goddammit Nicholas he almost _killed me_! What all the others throughout my life were unable to come close to doing, and you opened the door right up and said come and get it! Here she is, I never even told her about you!" Her eyes narrowed. "So tell me, Nick, was I 'bait', is that it? Longing for the bad old days, too lazy to find your old guru in sadism, so you figured I'd bring him here for you?" His stricken look told her how wrong she was, but it was hard to care.

"Don't you dare tell me I should know better, don't you fucking _dare_! YOU should know better, when have I ever given you reason to hide yourself from me? Have I ever demanded to know everything, have I ever pushed you to share more than you were willing to? You didn't have to tell me the story of creation, you really didn't, a simple 'This asshole Lucien LaCroix could be coming for you, so watch your back and tell me or Janette if he slinks around', that would have been _fine_." She backed off the bed, scrambling to her feet. Her outburst had drained everything out of her, and she began to topple. Nick leapt over the bed to catch her as she fell, somehow not surprised that she fought him with what little strength she had.

"Don't fucking touch me, damn you, this is _your _fault, I came here to be safe and you sold me out for your dumbass myth of redemption. You still won't believe me, you never _believe _me..."

He restrained her easily and put her back in bed, straddling her to prevent her rolling off again, pinning her wrists on either side of her head. "Stop, Maura, stop this. You're only making yourself worse." She calmed down a little, shut her eyes for a moment. Warily he released her hands, but still sat lightly on her. When she opened her eyes he was looking earnestly at her. "Everything you say is true, I know it. Not about being bait, not about wanting LaCroix to return, " he added hastily, "but everything else. I could have saved you from this, and I didn't. For the first time in memory someone saw me as whole and decent and accepted me as I am, and you're right I knew telling you about La Croix wouldn't change that, I knew but I didn't _believe_." He spread his palm against her cheek, expecting her to flinch away. She didn't. For that, anyway, he was grateful. "I don't want absolution, or penance, or any of that. I want to tell you I know how wrong I was, because it's all I can do. I know I can't make it up to you, I won't insult you by trying. But I want you to know how I've shaken myself, that when I knew what had happened and that you were hurt and in danger because of me, that all I could think of was that if it were someone else who'd put you in that position I'd kill him where he stood. But it was me. And I don't know what to do except tell you I know, and not make excuses or beg forgiveness, but tell you I'll never ever put you in that position again, not for anything or anyone. I love you, Sweet, I have no right to ask you to believe that after what's happened. But I do."

"Don't call me that," she told him, the core of ice in her beginning to dissolve.

"I have to. You are." He bent and kissed her cheek, so gently, and cool lips felt like sunshine to her. He could feel her face contract under his mouth, and pulled back expecting to see her turn away with disgust. But she was staring wide-eyed at him, her face drawn in a wounded frown.

"Why did you let him hurt me like that, huh?" and she sounded like a little kid struggling to understand. She was trembling, though he knew she wasn't cold. "You said you love me, you said I was safe here. Why did you lie to me?"

Nick sighed painfully. "I didn't lie. I didn't live up to my promise. That's not any better, is it? I'm so sorry." He had been resisting those words that seemed so lame and empty to him, so insulting to what she'd been through.

"Me too," and she heaved a quivery sigh. He thought for a moment she was going to cry, but she turned her face away looking so sad it was even worse than tears. He moved off of her then, stretched out next to her where he'd been for the past day and a half.

"Go drink something," she told him, "you're hungry. And you're cold. But come back after."

Before he was out the door she called to him, still weakly. "Nick?" He turned. "I don't hate you, Just Nick. I love you. But you confuse the fuck out of me sometimes."

His near-smile was pained. "Me too."

Somehow he wasn't surprised to find LaCroix lounging on the sofa downstairs.

"I knew you'd come here. What are you playing at? She nearly died."

"If I wanted to kill her, Nicolas, you'd be mourning her now."

Nick stood before him, controlling his rage but not he red glow in his eyes. "You screwed up, LaCroix. You thought you were in control but your ego controlled _you_, as always, and almost turned your little warning into a kill."

LaCroix shifted, caught out. "Well, then, Nicolas, all's well that ends well."

"Get out," he spat, and went into the kitchen for a bottle. "I don't care which window you use."

"Why Nicolas, no interest in a little reunion chat? No curiosity regarding where I've been, _who_ I've been, or what or who I've done?" He pulled a face of distaste, aware of what was in Nick's wine glass.

"No. And I can't imagine what you want with me after so long." It was such a foregone conclusion what each would say, there was no point. Nick just wanted him gone.

"Why, everything about you interests me, or have you forgotten? After all, I made you what you are, so what you become is of _paramount _interest to me."

Nick laughed derisively. "What I am now has nothing to do with you. Some vestiges of our association remain," he raised the glass in a mocking toast, "but little else. Why don't you go bother Janette. She's always been more tolerant than me."

"I have, or didn't she tell you? There seems to be a lot of that going around. But your pet is alive and becoming well, I understand. And you have had a very _meaningful _talk, so the air is clear between you. No harm done." His attention was distracted from Nick, who followed his gaze to the gallery railing where Maura stood, unsteady but fiery as hell even in her teddy-bear print flannel pj's.

"Fuck you, you freak, yeah I'm still alive."

LaCroix clucked disapprovingly at Nick. "My, my, your new playmate does have a nasty mouth doesn't she? Not as refined as your usual."

A smile pulled at Nick's mouth. "I guess not."

"I suppose I could have the Enforcers teach her a lesson in manners," LaCroix threatened darkly, but Maura just laughed.

"_Fuck _your Enforcers, and whatever they ride in on. You know from our little soiree that I'm no threat to the Community. In fact I have more in common with your kind than mine. The myth, as they say, has been exploded. Besides, I'm no longer 'at large' to addict and ruin you poor pussies. So how will you justify my 'elimination'?"

He didn't have an answer for that, and her continued laughter made him sneer in frustration. "Haven't you learned to control that creature yet, Nicolas?"

"Why would I even try?"

Maura was feeling dizzy and the last thing she wanted to do was pass out cold in front of this asshole, so she gripped the railing and leaned forward shakily to pronounce, "Get lost, freak. Watch out for pointy sticks, you never know who might be packing one next time you meet her." With that parting shot she stumbled back to the bedroom and fell flat on her face on the bed. Fucking vampires and their eternal dysfunctional families. What she wouldn't give right now for a tank of holy water and a fire hose.

LaCroix pressed a world-weary hand to his brow, looking for all the world like a bested schoolteacher.

"I'm not sure I understand why they are 'prized' by _anyone_," he sniped.

"I think every home should have one." Nick's mood soured as the events of the past few days were summoned to mind by LaCroix' casual arrogance. "Get out." There were too many other things he wanted to say but he let them go for the time being, knowing this wouldn't be their last meeting.

"The protector rears his righteous head. How... _sweet_." Nick managed not to react to the obvious reference and denied his reward, LaCroix rose. "Very well, Nicholas. I can see you're in no mood for a tète-a-tète. I'll go now, but not far. And not for long." Choosing to leave by conventional means, he strode to the door. "Do tell your pet adieu for me. She really was exhilarating, I can certainly see the appeal."

"I doubt it," Nick glowered as he slammed the door shut and locked it. A futile mortal convention, he knew, but satisfying nonetheless. After drinking another three bottles he returned to the bedroom, where Maura had lit the candle and crawled back under the covers trembling with cold and weakness.

"Well I'd say you impressed him, and LaCroix is rarely impressed." Nick told her.

"Bullshit. I verbally outflanked him. He'll be back, and more pissed off than curious next time."

Better to change the subject for now. "Drink," he told her, pouring her a glass of water and after she drank it down, another.

"But I'll be peeing all night," she protested.

"No you won't. You're so dehydrated you won't pee for a week, I promise."

She burrowed under the covers. "I'll never be warm again," she moaned. He disappeared for a moment, changed into some fresh silk pajamas and slid into bed.

"Come here, I'll help." She eyed him uncertainly.

"It's only midnight. I won't fall asleep on you, I promise." She knew Nick could remain awake as long as he liked. When working on a demanding case he sometimes didn't rest for days, though he looked more and more like hell as time went on. He reached over his shoulder and pulled one of his beloved history tomes from the shelf behind their heads. His vampire eyes didn't need anything other than the candlelight for reading. He propped up a pillow behind his head and extended his arm in invitation. "Come on. I'm burning up here, don't waste it."

She could feel it even from where she was at the opposite side of the enormous bed. She crept to the middle where he lay and snuggled up against him head to foot, arm around his waist, resting her cheek against his shoulder and sighing as his arm wrapped tight around her. He was right, he was burning up. Between that, her flannel pj's, and the layers of covers finally she felt warm enough.

"Does it ever bother you that I don't have a heartbeat?" he wondered and felt her shake her head against him.

"No, it's just you, isn't it? If Natalie came up with a heartbeat for you it would scare the shit out of me."

"Oh, is _that_ all it would take. Don't let LaCroix find out."

"Not funny." Her voice was pouty and he kissed her in apology.

"I'm sorry, you're right. Now go to sleep, you need it. No more surprises, I promise."

"Mmm." She dropped off without another word. Nick watched her sleep for a while. He knew the only thing that scared the shit out of _him_ was the prospect of her coming to harm. For all of her smart mouth and reactionary rage, Nick knew that the only reason Maura was alive was that LaCroix had not wanted to kill her. The fact that doing so would deprive him of another tool for torment would protect her far better than Nick could for the time being. He'd have to talk to Janette about it and see what she had to suggest, if anything. Before opening his book Nick peered into Maura's serene face. Absolutely at peace. Feeling absurdly content, Nick delved into 16th century Russian aristocracy, one hand tangled in her hair.

From time to time Maura made small sounds in her sleep, murmurs and near-whimpers that would silence when he moved his fingers a bit. Some of that sleep-code was also evident, the kind of thing that mortals were terrified would reveal their innermost secrets while they slept, that to the waking world emerged as gibberish. A few coherent words formed, "No," and later "don't". Nick could feel Maura was sleeping soundly, with no evidence of bad dreams, and realized those words could easily connect in her dream world to "No, I don't want to watch that movie," or "don't leave your bloodstained wine glass in the sink, yuck." At one point she said, very distinctly, "bats," which forced Nick to stifle a laugh.

"What _is_ going on in there?" he asked quietly, kissing her head. She didn't wake, but burrowed a little closer. A sigh escaped him. Right now she was soft and warm next to him. Awake she was strong, smart, edgily defensive. So unlike the others who had shared his ethereal melancholy. She was wearied enough by her life to take everything as it came, not expecting the worst but ready to deal with whatever on its own terms. Even in the presence of wit and wisdom and strength, it had always been the melancholy that triggered his longing. But this one he couldn't even hypnotize. It was this kind of woman he had never had much luck with, too sharp to be fooled and too suspicious to easily be victimized. Since Maura's arrival he felt frequently overmatched, and that increased his attraction. Equal ground was something unfamiliar to him and it was becoming more and more appealing. More than once he'd found himself wondering if she were right, if it were an unrealistic fear that kept him from making love with her beyond their vampiric liaisons. It could well be that the connection between sex and death he'd experienced for so long was one of habit and not of nature, a function of his depraved past life. His hand wandered from Maura's head until his fingers trailed inside the collar of her pajamas to the join of her neck and shoulder, the place where he buried his face before sharing her blood. He'd tried to convince himself that, too, was mere habit. As usual his inner, honest self knew better. Soft, sweet, so warm, the strength of her mind and wit and character found an alter-ego in her flesh and it was important to him to be reminded of that before he took from her even what she shared so freely. He replaced his book on the shelf and slid down a bit in bed so he could hold her properly, her head under his chin. She mumbled, "Mmm, bats," and squashed her face into his shoulder. Ah, he realized with a smile, so that was his (subconscious) code name. Certainly he'd been called worse. Shifting to his back, he positioned them so Maura could easily move away when his body temperature fell. He decided to check with Natalie next evening regarding her search for a chemical "thermostat" for him. He'd be grateful for a temporary, even a one-time, fix. Just once he'd like to wake up with Maura as close as she was when he'd fallen into sleep. He felt inside the same niggling curiosity he'd felt before he'd taken her that first time, what would it _be_ like? He'd experienced every kind of physical pleasure he could imagine was possible, but what would it be like with someone who knew all about him, who didn't come to him a victim or a fellow traveler desperately lonely or mad with blood lust? Maura wanted him, she'd made that much plain, and as in all things she wanted him complete in his darkness and struggling light. It was all one to her, and the prospect was unlike anything he'd considered before.

Maura startled Nick by opening her eyes just as he was staring intently into her face. In fact, they both jumped.

"What? Am I changing colors or something?" she mumbled, waking more suddenly than she liked.

"Ssh, go back to sleep."

"I dunno, you're eyeing me like I'm your next meal."

"Now, there's a thought..." he kissed her cheek and then her neck, and taking his cue she tipped her head a bit to the side. He didn't just take from her during the new moon, but now and then when they were close and quiet they joined like this. Her pulse beat against his tongue, drawing him in as always, but something in it was weaker this time. He drew back, suddenly mindful of the events of the past couple of days.

"What?" she wanted to know. Given the pleasure she got from the experience, this was kind of like screeching to halt in the middle of foreplay.

His brow was knit in consternation. "I don't know what I was thinking, it's too soon." Then his expression softened with a smile as if he could change the subject that easily, "Go to sleep, Luna." She liked the way her nickname sounded in his mouth. She didn't like the way he withdrew to lie on his back, not touching her.

"You're not seducing a rape victim, Nick."

"Oh, for... Maura, _really_."

"Yeah, really," she rose on an elbow to stare at him. "You have more reasons for going into hiding than anyone I ever met." That's what she called it when his internal walls rose, often quite suddenly. She leaned closer, ignoring his distasteful expression and the fact he was staring at the ceiling.

"Yeah, he hurt me. Bad. But you _don't_, not ever. Okay, it was like rape, it _was_ rape, you know it was, being forced into something like that always has been. And it's dirty and it's painful. But _you_ haven't ever made me feel that way. You can't possibly think it's the same thing. Do you really think I can't tell the difference?" His eyes flickered toward her, uneasily persuaded. She kissed his cheek and rolled over on her side. A moment later he was close behind her, arm around her waist, face against the back of her head, but silent.

"You know how you make me feel, Just Nick?" she asked as if she were talking to herself. "Like I belong."

"No to me..." He sounded uneasy about that possibility.

Brother, she thought, male ego was universal. "No. Here. Like I belong here. Not to you, _with_ you. Even when you're lying there as gone as you can be and still and cold as stone, I belong here. So don't you worry about your busted thermostat, or whether or not you touch me the right way. And I won't worry about making you see yourself exactly as I see you, or beating you into accepting all your best of dark and bright. Everything will find its own way. Deal?" The arm around her squeezed her back against him.

"Deal."

Maura tried so hard to overcome the chill that grew in him, but she couldn't suppress a shiver. He kissed the back of her neck with cool lips and pulled away to lie on his own side of the bed. "'night, Sweet." Her only response was a sigh.

"What?"

She lay on her back next to him, staring into the darkness. "Remember what I said about 'no drama'?"

"Sure."

"It's not exactly working out, is it?"

Nick laughed and reached over for a last kiss goodnight. "Everything will find its own way. Deal?"

"Deal."


End file.
